Summary
Donald Trump stated that U.S. aid to Ukraine should be compensated with $500 billion worth of its mineral resources, including rare earth elements.
He claimed Ukraine had “essentially agreed” to this arrangement. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has hinted at allowing U.S. access to these resources to maintain support.
The idea aligns with Ukraine’s “victory plan” for post-war recovery.
Trump’s comments drew criticism, with German Chancellor Olaf Scholz condemning his approach as “very egotistic, very self-centered.”
This is, for a sense of scale, more than five times the total value of everything the US has sent to Ukraine since February 2022
The entire gdp of the country is under $200B. Lol he’s asking for resources worth over 2.5X the value of the entire country 🤡
They have like 25 Trillion of estimated rare earth minerals under their feet and most of it is on the border of Russian controlled territory.
If they make a deal to allow US companies to extract it and get security guarantees for a decade or so from the US, it might actually be a decent deal. (Assuming that the US won’t randomly turn on you because they are batshit crazy)
Yeah I get that but it just sounds absurd and douchey when you think about it. The equivalent would sorta be if someone agreed to help us if we gave them $67 Trillion worth of oil gas and wood in return.
And just from a morality/ethical standpoint it’s goofy. Only help someone if they let you bend them over and rob them blind (I get it’s a more nuanced than that but still, it just feels slimy)
Well, there also is a big amount of rebuilding to be done and no matter who would be in the US government, there would be a strong push for the rebuilding to end in factories, apartments and farms to be owned by US investors. Also the US has a history of combining “security” with resource access.
In this regards Ukraine is getting fucked by receiving less aid than is needed to push back, but just enough to cause maximal attrition to Russia. And using the vast destruction caused by a prolonged war, was likely part of the strategy to profit off this war, both for Russia expecting victory and the US/Western Allies expecting Russia to eventually succumb to the attrition.
Now problem is that Russia kept escalating, instead of limiting their losses.