Ukraine’s choice? Become a US colony or a Russian one

Latest Trump offer to trade Ukraine’s minerals for back pay is a mafia shakedown, writes world affairs editor Sam Kiley

- Sam Kiley

Anew Donald Trump deal offered to Ukraine in return for continued US support, but with no security guarantees in the face of Russia’s invasion, forces it to choose between life as a US economic colony or Russian occupation.

The latest version of the much-mutated minerals deal from the White House, which has been tabled in Kyiv, goes further than ever before in attempting to get Ukraine to sign up to back pay for US support in the war, plus 4 per cent.

On top of that it demands that the US, under Delaware law, controls most of Ukraine’s industrial output and much of its transport and communications system. It is the result of a mafiastyle protection shakedown on Ukraine by its former friends in Washington DC supported (by accident or design) by thuggery from the Kremlin.

Ukrainian parliamentarians told The Independent that even if, as is unlikely, president Volodymyr Zelensky signed up to the offer it would stand no chance of ratification by Ukraine’s legislature. “It completely ignores international law and the Ukrainian constitution and Ukrainian law,” said Oleksandr Morezkho, chairman of the Ukrainian parliament’s foreign affairs committee.

Russia’s president Vladimir Putin has often said that Ukraine is not a “real” country but a natural part of the Russian, or Soviet, empire. Its mineral and agricultural wealth have been seen by Russian colonialists as an essential part of Russian regional dominance.

The Trump administration clearly now sees vast rewards for American business if it can trade the commanding heights of the Ukrainian economy for back payment on war donations and a long-term non-military US presence. The minerals deal – which takes the form of a business contract under US law which has no jurisdiction in Ukraine – sets out that Ukraine and the US would split the royalties from oil, gas, and all minerals.