The minerals deal may be good news for Ukraine, but it is not necessarily bad news for Russia.
That’s because a deal with Volodymyr Zelenskyy doesn’t preclude a deal with Vladimir Putin.
It’s important to remember there are three separate strands of negotiations that Donald Trump is juggling here.
Follow live updates: US and Ukraine sign ‘historic’ deal
US treasury secretary Scott Bessent and Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko sign the fund deal. Pic: US Treasury
This deal is the result of one strand – Washington’s contacts with Kyiv, which the White House has pursued to ensure America gets something back for its military support of Ukraine.
Then there are peace talks themselves, where Donald Trump has proposed what appears to be a very one-sided peace plan in favour of Moscow. For now, that hasn’t changed.
And the final strand is the US-Russia strand, where the US president is chasing a rapprochement with Moscow.
There is some crossover between the strands – the security guarantees for Ukraine are a case in point.
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US and Ukraine’s ‘historic economic partnership’
US companies on the ground in eastern Ukraine is not exactly the security guarantee Mr Zelenskyy had in mind, but I think it will give the Kremlin pause for thought when it comes to continuing its military campaign.
Because if it did, it would almost certainly scupper the rapprochement with Washington.
There has been lots of talk of business deals and joint economic cooperation between the US and Russia as a result of their negotiations and I’m sure both parties still intend that to happen.
Trump’s business background suggests he will try to get as much out of this situation as possible, and I think Russia will as well.
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So I think the Kremlin could see this as an opportunity to extract more from the negotiations they’re involved in, perhaps portraying it as a concession on their part in order to impose more conditions.
They might say, for example, that American business interests are a security guarantee enough for Kyiv, and then use that argument to get US backing for their opposition to a real security guarantee in the form of European peacekeepers.
Or they might use it to reinforce other demands, like sanctions relief, recognition of Crimea or US support for Russia’s readmittance to the G7.
Donald Trump may be the master dealmaker, but Moscow are the masters of protecting their own interests and this minerals deal is unlikely to prevent that.