Verkhovna Rada Committee OKs Minerals Deal, Final Vote Expected This Week

On Tuesday, the Foreign Affairs Committee of the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s legislature, approved the long-discussed minerals deal with the US, sending it to the full legislative body for an up-and-down vote expected on Thursday, May 8. Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal expressed hope that the Rada would ratify it in short order.

Economy Minister Yuliia Svyrydenko and US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signed the deal in Washington on May 1, establishing a joint fund to manage proceeds from the extraction, on Ukrainian soil and with American companies assisting in development, of natural resources ranging from fossil fuels to some rare-earth metals.

A vote in favor would represent a definitive end to a months-long saga that began in February, when Bessent’s office first presented the agreement to President Volodymyr Zelensky in Kyiv.

A now-infamous Oval Office argument ensued on Feb. 28, after Zelensky tried to explain that he alone could not approve the deal, and that Ukraine’s parliament would have the final say. At the time, Zelensky complained that Bessent’s office, via the US embassy, had dropped off a draft and expected it to be signed within a few hours when the Treasury Secretary was slated to arrive.

Under the agreement, the two countries will establish the “United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund” as a limited partnership.

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The US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC) will manage the fund from the American side. Ukraine will manage it through the “Agency on Support [of] Public-Private Partnership,” or the PPP Agency. 

The first deputy head of the Verkhovna Rada’s Committee on Finance, Tax, and Customs Policy, Yaroslav Zheleznyak, noted that the committee’s decision on Tuesday included a key provision:

Any additional arrangements on establishing the United States-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund shall not contradict this agreement.

Zheleznyak added that 11 committee members voted in favor, one abstained, and two were absent.