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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   519 thread views

Transnational Thursday for February 27, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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It's a nothingburger. The more important stuff to watch is how the US and Russian talks go.

The full text leaked https://kyivindependent.com/exclusive-the-full-text-of-the-final-us-ukraine-mineral-agreement/

and it states that only new mineral reserves will go to the fund. Which won't be happening any time soon given the condition of Ukraine.

The Government of Ukraine will contribute to the Fund 50 percent of all revenues earned from the future monetization of all relevant Ukrainian Government-owned natural resource assets

It's also not to repay us for all the money Biden wasted, it's just to invest in Ukraine.

Contributions made to the Fund will be reinvested at least annually in Ukraine to promote the safety, security and prosperity of Ukraine, to be further defined in the Fund Agreement. The Fund Agreement will also provide for future distributions.

It provides zero security agreements either. Basically it was an attempt by the deep state to further entangle the US in it's Ukraine mess. Except Trump didn't want to provide security, and Zelensky didn't want to give away 50% of it's current mineral wealth to crony capital US contractors that'll "rebuild" Ukraine while skimming off tons of the money for themselves, USAID style. Not without security guarantees at least.

So the deal got watered down to nothing.

More detailed terms pertaining to the Fund’s governance and operation will be set forth in a subsequent agreement

Yeah so it says nothing about what the fund will do. Also the Ukranian government, famously corrupt, is going to be pretty squishy about how revenues earned from monetization are going to be calculated and distributed.

To steelman: While there aren't security agreements here, the US won't get any of these resources if Russia conquers the entirety of the country or the land with the most valuable resources. There's still incentive to keep them in Ukraine's borders and under their control.

Not really true, Putin has offered deals on Russia's rare earth minerals in it's new territories.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c4gdx7488g5o

Seems unlikely to happen either way, any meaningful security agreements and Russia just continues grinding Ukraine down and refuses to deal. On the other hand westerners are still adapting to multipolarism and the idealism they could afford under the old unipolar order being gone. So making a deal with Russia for any sort of resources would be a hard sell right now.

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