The United States Ministry of Finance announced on Wednesday, April 30 that the United States and Ukraine signed an agreement that established “an investment fund in reconstruction”, after weeks of hard negotiations on access to Ukrainian natural resources.
“In recognition of the important financial and material support that the people of the United States have provided to Ukraine since the invasion of Russia, this economic association puts our two countries in the position of collaborating and investing to ensure that our assets, talents and capacities can accelerate the economic reconstruction of Ukraine,” says the press release, which does not give details of the content of the agreement.
“It is the Ukrainian state that determines where and what to extract”
The signing of the agreement was confirmed by the Minister of the Ukrainian economy Yulia Svyrydenko in their social networks. Specifies in particular that “all resources in our territory and in territorial waters belong to Ukraine.”
According to her, this fund “will attract Western investments in our country” and will be managed “together with the United States.” “Neither of the two games will have a dominant vote, which reflects the equal association between Ukraine and the United States,” he said.
An earlier version of this text should have been signed during the visit of Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the White House at the end of February, but his unprecedented altercation with his US counterpart had precipitated his departure without signing the agreement.
A new version, offered by Washington in March, had been considered very unfavorable by Ukrainian and media deputies.
According to negotiations, this document could be transformed into a more acceptable version for kyiv, according to Ukrainian officials. In particular, contrary to what Donald Trump wanted, the text does not recognize as a debt against the United States the tens of billions of dollars in American military and financial aid granted to Ukraine for his predecessor Joe Biden.
Source: BFM TV
