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The agreement is seen as opening the door to possible continued backing from the United States under the Trump administration, either as aid for the war effort or as enforcement of any cease-fire. Officials in the United States and Ukraine said on Tuesday that a version had been accepted by both sides.<\/p>\n
At a cabinet meeting on Wednesday, President Trump said President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine will visit Washington on Friday to sign the deal.<\/p>\n
Mr. Zelensky, speaking to reporters in Kyiv on Wednesday, said that including mention of security guarantees had been a priority for him in negotiations and was necessary for Ukraine to call the deal successful.<\/p>\n
\u201cI really wanted the appearance of at least the phrase \u2018security guarantee for Ukraine,\u2019\u201d in the document, Mr. Zelensky said. The phrase, he said, \u201cappeared in point 10 and it is important that it is there.\u201d<\/p>\n
He said he was pleased that the deal was not framed as repayment for past assistance. It was important, he said, that in the agreement Ukrainians were not presented as \u201cdebtors.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The draft obtained by The Times showed Scott Bessent, the U.S. Treasury secretary, and Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine\u2019s economy minister, as the initial signatories.<\/p>\n
Earlier on Wednesday, Ukraine\u2019s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, spoke about the new phrase about security guarantees in terms suggesting that the United States had not acceded to the request for its inclusion. Mr. Shmyhal said that neither Mr. Zelensky nor other officials in the Ukrainian government would sign the deal if the phrase were omitted, calling it an \u201cintegral element\u201d to the agreement on minerals.<\/p>\n
Mr. Zelensky had proposed a deal granting the United States access to mineral wealth last fall as a contingency in case Mr. Trump won the American election. But the Ukrainian leader balked at the terms presented earlier this month after Mr. Trump took office.<\/p>\n
Mr. Zelensky had pushed hard that a commitment to Ukraine\u2019s security be detailed in the document. In exchange, Ukraine would contribute half of future natural resource earnings to an American-controlled fund.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The Trump administration resisted that request. Officials in Washington argued that security guarantees were implied in Washington\u2019s holding a financial interest in Ukrainian metal ores, minerals, oil and natural gas, and that such an agreement would provide an incentive to prevent Russian occupation of the resources.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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The American national security adviser, Mike Waltz, told Fox News this past week that, for Ukrainians, U.S. involvement in natural resources was \u201cthe best security guarantee they could ever hope for, much more than another pallet of ammunition.\u201d<\/p>\n
The draft from Tuesday included earlier phrasing that the United States would take \u201csteps to protect mutual investments,\u201d implying an American commitment to safeguard the sites of resource deposits, some of which are close to front lines.<\/p>\n
Mr. Trump has called the deal payback for earlier American aid and had asked for $500 billion. That figure, included in earlier drafts, alarmed officials in Kyiv and was dropped from later versions.<\/p>\n
The Trump administration negotiators, the Ukrainian official briefed on the draft said, had strenuously tried to exclude the phrase on security guarantees from earlier versions, arguing that the language was beyond the scope of a negotiation over mineral rights. It was added only in drafts late in the negotiations, the official said.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
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It was unclear if the new phrasing suggested support for American security guarantees or support for Ukraine\u2019s ongoing diplomatic effort to shore up backing for a European peacekeeping mission and other assurances to safeguard a possible cease-fire.<\/p>\n
The British prime minister, Keir Starmer, is scheduled to travel to Washington on Wednesday to present to Mr. Trump a European initiative to field a 30,000-strong peacekeeping force. European leaders have said such a force would nonetheless require an American \u201cbackstop\u201d of military assistance, such as American satellite surveillance, air defense or air force support.<\/p>\n
Other terms in the draft beyond security remained mostly unaltered from a previous draft on Monday. The Ukrainian government agreed to relinquish half of its revenues from the future monetization of natural resources including minerals, oil and gas, as well as earnings from associated infrastructure such as liquefied natural gas terminals and port infrastructure. The fund would not draw on revenue from already existing natural resource business such as mines and oil wells.<\/p>\n
Those revenues would fill a fund where the United States would hold a percentage of ownership and degree of control \u201cto the maximum\u201d extent allowed under American law. It is unclear how that would be interpreted.<\/p>\n
In his comments to reporters in Kyiv on Wednesday, Mr. Zelensky also touched on the cease-fire negotiations that Mr. Trump has said he will engage in with Russia. The Ukrainian Army would continue fighting, Mr. Zelensky said, unless a cease-fire included security guarantees.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n