Piece Talks: the Extractive Angle in U.S. Diplomacy with Ukraine
- Isabella Lake
- Mar 3
- 3 min read
Last June, U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham first spoke about Ukraine’s mineral wealth in an interview with CBS. “They’re sitting on $10 to $12 trillion of critical minerals in Ukraine”, Graham argued. “They could be the richest country in all of Europe. I don’t want to give that money and those assets to Putin to share with China.”
In September, the senator again appealed to U.S. business interests for war aid, imploring, “They’re sitting on a trillion dollars worth of minerals that could be good to our economy… They just need weapons.”
These plans were, in part, what led up to an explosive meeting between the U.S. President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelenskyy last week, which culminated in Vice President Vance calling Zelenskyy “disrespectful” and positing that his thanklessness constituted “gambling with World War III.”
Tensions at the meeting primarily rose when President Zelenskyy expressed doubts that Russia’s President Putin would respect a land-for-peace deal, given his previous violations of a number of ceasefire treaties. Zelenskyy has formerly compared Putin’s territorial advances to those of Adolf Hitler in the years leading up to World War II.
After the meeting, Trump wrote on social media, “I have determined that President Zelensky is not ready for Peace if America is involved, because he feels our involvement gives him a big advantage in negotiations. I don’t want advantage, I want PEACE. He disrespected the United States of America in its cherished Oval Office. He can come back when he is ready for Peace.” Trump received public support from House Leader Mike Johnson, security advisor Mike Waltz, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio.
The deal was discussed as Russia, in the past week, launched a record number of drone attacks in Ukraine, signifying the side’s persistence in a war now over 1,000 days old.
For Ukrainians, however, the daily realities of violent conflict stretch further back than the invasion of 2022 to the Maidan Revolution in 2014. As tensions between supporters of Russia and the West flared, then-president Viktor Yanukovych fled the country, leaving over a decade of war in his wake.
An underreported fact of the situation in 2014, as the independent Oakland Institute has highlighted, is that the deadly Kyiv protests against Yanukovych were largely catalyzed by foreign financing diplomacy. Supporters of European integration in Kyiv were outraged at Yanukovych’s rejection of a European Union Association agreement which would have further opened private trade to the West. This agreement was tied to a US$17 billion loan from the International Monetary Fund.
Opting instead for a deal from Russia which included a discount on natural gas, Yanukovych symbolically and materially aligned Ukrainian interests with her eastern trading partner.
The thread of political support staked on economics continues into today, with the mineral deal talks last week symbolizing the United States’s commitment to Ukrainian war efforts. President Trump, other politicians, and Western news sources often acknowledge the United States’ preeminent financial backing of Ukraine, which has received waning political support.
U.S. officials like Senator Graham advocate sending weapons still, though the argument that Ukraine sits “on a goldmine” is a far cry from the once broadly-humanitarian appeal for American allyship. The opportunistic tone of these statements, called ‘public salivating’ by some critics, brings into question just how beneficial U.S. support of Ukraine will be if it comes at a great material cost.
Meanwhile in Ukraine, public support for a land-for-peace deal is small, but increasing: from 26% in February 2024 to 32% in May.
Which future might portend better results for Ukraine: one in which she garners unwavering U.S. loyalty, but perhaps at a cost, or one in which she concedes territory with risk of Putin’s further encroachment? And is there a way she can defend herself from both—the rapacious desires of some U.S. interest groups, as well as the expansion of one of the world’s most feared dictators?
Additional Reading Materials
Walking on the West Side: the World Bank and the IMF in the Ukraine Conflict | The Oakland Institute
Comments