On Ukraine, Trump turns to hardball tactics: Analysis

The Trump administration’s sharp pivot toward Russia and the president’s verbal attacks on Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy sent shock waves across the Atlantic this week — leaving European allies scrambling to respond and Ukraine’s ability to continue fighting off Moscow’s invasion in grave doubt.

But amid the political chaos set off by the Trump administration’s hurried push to end the conflict runs a more subtle undercurrent of dealings aimed at achieving a different goal: access to Ukraine’s significant reserves of rare earth minerals.

The president has made no secret of his pursuit of an agreement that would give the United States access to a significant share of the mineral wealth — one that Zelenskyy has, so far, declined to take.

But on Friday, both Trump and Zelenskyy signaled a deal could be in the offing.

“I think we’re pretty close. You know, I think they want it, and they feel good about it. And it’s a significant — it’s a big deal. But they want it, and it keeps us in that country,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “And they’re very happy about it.”

Officials have openly acknowledged Trump’s vexation with Zelenskyy, but behind closed doors, they say the president’s public outbursts are not just his self-expression but also his negotiating tactics at work. It remains to be seen if the strategy will lead to the deal Trump desires, but analysts say it’s likely to come with geopolitical collateral damage that could jeopardize European security.

“Negotiating with no cards”

Trump has publicly vented his frustrations with Zelenskyy nearly every day this week, but on Friday, the president zeroed in on the rare mineral deal during a radio interview, declaring, “I’ve had it.”

“I’ve been watching for years, and I’ve been watching him negotiate with no cards. He has no cards. And you get sick of it. You just get sick of it,” Trump said of the Ukrainian president.

Trump then turned to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s visit to Ukraine earlier this month, during which the administration’s initial proposal was laid out for Zelenskyy — calling it a “wasted trip.”

“They couldn’t even come close to getting a deal done,” Trump said. “And frankly, I wish he didn’t go there, waste all of his time like that, but they couldn’t get close.”

Some experts said they believe this falls perfectly into line with Trump’s “America first” foreign policy — and argue it’s unlikely to be successful in the long run.

“This is just good old acquisitive, materialistic behavior. I think that he envisages getting access to a big chunk of Ukraine’s minerals, that he reenters the United States into Russia’s fossil fuel market, that he wants to go out there and cut some kind of deal with Xi Jinping on trade,” said Charles Kupchan, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

Trump has repeatedly described the deal as a way of ensuring Americans are paid back for the money spent supporting Ukraine’s war efforts, while greatly inflating the amount of money the U.S. has allocated to the cause.

“We get our money back,” Trump said of the deal on Friday, asserting that it “should have been signed long before we went in.”

“I think this is basically his very ill-considered way of pressuring the Ukrainians to sign the minerals deal,” said John Hardie, the deputy director of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies’ Russia Program. “It’s obviously the wrong way to go about it.”

A Ukrainian official outlined Kyiv’s misgivings about the meeting between Bessent and Zelenskyy to ABC News, saying the Ukrainian side was given almost no time to review the deal before it was urged to sign it.

But still, U.S. and Ukrainian officials said talks have forged ahead and that the Trump administration has offered up a new proposal.

“The best business partner we’ve ever dreamed of”

However, not everyone sees Trump’s interest in Ukraine’s natural wealth as a pitfall.

Heidi Crebo-Rediker, a senior fellow in the Center for Geoeconomic Studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, argued that investment in Ukrainian resources and investment in its future security go hand in hand.

“Even if President Trump takes a purely transactional ‘America first’ approach to negotiations, protecting Ukraine’s democracy, sovereignty, land and people is entirely consistent with that position,” Crebo-Rediker said.

She also pointed to a comment made by Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., a staunch Trump ally, in June 2024: “If we help Ukraine now, they can become the best business partner we ever dreamed of. That $10 [trillion] to $12 trillion of critical mineral assets could be used by Ukraine and the West, not given to Putin and China.”

Crebo-Rediker argued that cementing an economic relationship between the U.S. and Ukraine would strengthen Kyiv’s hand in peace talks with Russia while also “reinforcing the United States’ supply chain resilience, a new defense-innovation industrial base and commercial interests.” A win-win.

But some say Trump’s tactics have put the cart before the horse — that his comments create the appearance that when it comes to U.S. support for Ukraine’s war effort, the bottom has dropped out.

It’s unclear whether the Trump administration is willing to offer any explicit security guarantees for Ukraine as part of a mineral deal, but a U.S. official and a Ukrainian official familiar with the negotiation process said the initial proposal included no such provisions.

Officials familiar with the Trump administration’s thinking on the matter said negotiators have tried to put the mineral deal on a separate track from peace talks but argued the terms of the agreement would require the Ukraine to remain an autonomous nation for the U.S. to reap its rewards.

But Hardie argued that it’s security guarantees for Ukraine should be completely isolated from any business deal.

“I think the terms of that deal itself are frankly predatory in nature,” he said.

“Our security aid is not charity — it’s an investment in our own security, and I think it’s unwise to tie that to the minerals deal,” Hardie continued. “We’re not a colonial power trying to strip Ukraine of its natural resources.”

A bigger deal?

Whether the mineral deal is Trump’s desired end game or just the beginning is unclear.

The president has also said he would like to pursue denuclearization talks with Russia and China and convince both countries to scale down defense spending after bringing the war in Ukraine to a close.

Benjamin Jensen, a senior fellow in the Futures Lab at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, argued that “the Trump team is charting a course that is as bold as it is risky.”

Jensen argued the president’s recent dealings aim to reach “a new grand bargain” that spans multiple areas critical to national security: arms control, access to natural resources, cyberspace competition and beyond.

“The president’s foreign policy team appears to be leveraging negotiations around Ukraine as a forum to negotiate remaking the international system,” he said. “The theory of victory is simple and seductive: use a grand rapprochement with Russia to undermine the authoritarian axis linking Moscow to China, Iran and North Korea while advancing U.S. economic interests.”

According to Jensen, the manifold dangers of “strategic overconfidence” include threats to long-term stability.

“For the grand bargain to work, Trump will have to trust that Putin won’t use the end of hostilities in Ukraine to accelerate re-arming,” he said. “In the worst case, Putin could wait until Trump’s presidency ends to launch a new war, potentially timed with a major Chinese action against Taiwan.”