How Kyiv and DC closed the resource accord Mid-Air

The ink’s finally dry after a week of brinkmanship and one mid-air U-turn that had Kiev’s delegation pricing in a humiliating return flight. Treasury chief Scott Bessent and Ukraine’s closer-in-chief Yulia Svyrydenko have now sealed what the street is dubbing the Resource Accord—a deal that threads political optics with hard-asset optionality.

Getting to the finish line was pure high-stakes theatre. The weekend “final round” morphed into a 30-hour hostage-negotiation at 38,000 feet when Washington crackled over the sat-phone: “Sign the framework and the fund docs or turn that bird around.” Kyiv hit the brakes—missing governance language, fuzzy audit rights, no dice. For forty-eight hours the two sides played chicken, red-lines melting one by one until the only ink that mattered was the signature block. At 17:40 ET, with barely a shutter click for posterity, the pens finally met paper. Now Zelensky can tweet the victory lap without catching sniper fire from his own MPs, and the plane touches down with a deal instead of a diplomatic face-plant.

At the heart of it sits a 50/50 sovereign fund: Washington and Kyiv seed a war-chest big enough to bankroll every drill rig, strip mine and pipeline Ukraine can jam into a data room. Future U.S. military aid isn’t just hardware anymore—it’s equity, booked straight onto America’s balance sheet as in-kind capital.

Governance and cash flow mimic that symmetry. Board parity—three U.S. seats, three Ukrainian—and revenue parity, with profits split right down the middle. That’s a far cleaner carve-up than most sceptics expected when this first hit the rumor mill.

Then comes the kicker: a first-refusal clause that hands Uncle Sam the pole position on any lithium, titanium, graphite or rare-earth concession Ukraine brings to market. Everyone else lines up behind the Stars and Stripes.

And let’s not overlook the stealth concession that greased the wheels: Kyiv’s debt wipe. Trump’s earlier demand that Ukraine repay legacy U.S. aid is gone; only future weapons packages are netted against Washington’s capital call. Politically explosive language vanished, the champagne popped, and the pens finally hit paper.

The fund gives Ukraine cash without surrendering sovereignty, gives Washington critical minerals diversification on the cheap, and gives traders plenty of headline juice to scalp before the real project-finance slog begins.

Kyiv just pulled off a textbook case of “resource nationalism lite.” They pocket the cap-ex without surrendering the crown jewels, while Washington locks in a critical minerals back-door at half the cost of chasing tonnage in Australia or Africa. It’s diversification on the cheap—an options package on Ukraine’s lithium, titanium, and graphite that costs Uncle Sam little more than rerouted military aid.

Some pundits are spinning this as an early peace signal. I’m not buying that premium yet. Sure, an economic scaffold like this could bankroll a cease-fire dividend down the road, but for now, it also doubles as a hedge in case the front line ossifies where it is. Until the artillery falls silent, the discount rate on any Ukrainian project stays north of punitive.

Meanwhile, Brussels is left standing at the window, nose pressed to the glass. The EU lobbied hard for a carve-out and got ghosted, so expect the volume to crank up on a “Critical Raw Materials Act 2.0” as they scramble to claw back relevance.