COMMENTARY: The USA-Ukraine minerals agreement — the 2025 promise vs. 2026 reality

April 30, 2025 — the day the deal was signed

On April 30, 2025, the United States and Ukraine signed a minerals agreement that was presented by both governments as a landmark in their bilateral economic relationship — a framework for joint exploitation of Ukraine's vast natural resource wealth, with proceeds structured to support reconstruction and to give the US a financial stake in Ukraine's long-term economic recovery. The agreement established a $150 million joint fund — capitalized equally at $75 million from the US Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and $75 million from the Ukrainian government — to finance the early stages of minerals exploration and development in partnership with American companies.

The signing ceremony was notable for its political framing: both sides presented the agreement as evidence that the Trump administration's relationship with Ukraine was not purely adversarial — that despite the president's complicated posture on the conflict, the US had specific strategic and economic interests in Ukraine's resources that created a basis for sustained bilateral engagement. Lithium, rare earths, titanium, manganese, uranium — Ukraine has significant deposits of the minerals that the US strategic supply chain needs, in a geopolitical context where reducing dependence on Chinese mineral supply is a national security priority.

The fund goes operational — December 2025

The joint fund established in April 2025 became operationally active in December 2025 — a timeline of approximately seven months from signing to operation that, for a bilateral investment fund in a war zone, represents reasonable institutional processing speed. The fund's operational activation meant that investment decisions could begin — identifying specific mineral deposits, commissioning geological assessments, engaging US and Ukrainian companies in joint venture structures, and beginning the legal and regulatory work that mineral development requires.

The December 2025 activation was quietly celebrated by both governments — a demonstration that the agreement was not merely a political declaration but an operational reality, however modest in initial scale. The question was always whether this initial reality would scale to the aspirational dimensions that the April signing ceremony had implied. By June 2026, the answer was becoming clear — and it was more complicated than either optimism or pessimism had predicted.

I followed the April 2025 minerals agreement signing with specific attention to what was being promised versus what was being committed. The $150 million fund is real. The geological potential of Ukrainian mineral deposits is also real. The gap between a $150 million fund and the multi-billion-dollar investment needed to develop those deposits at scale in a war zone is the gap where aspiration and reality diverge. That gap did not appear in June 2026. It was visible from April 2025. The question was always whether the gap would close or widen.

What was announced at the URC 2026

On June 25, 2026 — at the Ukraine Recovery Conference in Gdańsk — the US Development Finance Corporation (DFC) and the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA) of the World Bank announced a joint political risk insurance framework for investments under the Ukraine-US minerals agreement. The DFC-MIGA insurance mechanism is designed to address the single largest barrier to private capital deployment for Ukrainian minerals development: war risk.

Political risk insurance — specifically the guarantees that cover investors against losses from expropriation, breach of contract by the host government, or the physical destruction of assets by war — is the de-risking tool that the minerals agreement's architects had always identified as necessary to attract private capital beyond the initial DFC capitalization. The Gdańsk announcement represented the first concrete step toward providing that insurance at a scale that could meaningfully change private investor calculations about Ukrainian minerals development.

MIGA's role and its limitations

The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency is the World Bank's political risk insurance arm — an institution specifically designed to facilitate foreign investment in developing countries by guaranteeing investors against political risks that private insurance markets cannot cover. Its involvement in the Ukraine minerals framework gives the insurance mechanism multilateral credibility and brings the World Bank's institutional standing to the risk management architecture.

The limitation: MIGA has never operated in an active war zone at the scale that Ukrainian minerals development would require. Its existing framework and pricing models are designed for post-conflict and high-risk developing country environments, not for an environment where active military operations can physically destroy infrastructure overnight. The June 25 announcement represents a commitment to developing the appropriate framework — not a deployed instrument ready for immediate use. The gap between announcement and operational deployment may span months or years.

A political risk insurance announcement at a recovery conference is a statement of intent. Intent is not capital. The DFC-MIGA framework, when operational, will be valuable. The timeline from "DFC-MIGA announce framework" to "private investor writes check for Ukrainian lithium mine" is measured in years, not months, even in the most optimistic scenarios. Managing expectations about this timeline is the honest thing to do. The announcement is a real step. It is one step in a very long staircase.

The resource map and its strategic significance

Ukraine's mineral wealth is substantial and strategically significant for the Western industrial and technology supply chain. The country has identified deposits of 42 of the 50 minerals designated as critical by the United States — including lithium (essential for battery technology), rare earth elements (essential for electric motors, wind turbines, and defense electronics), titanium (aerospace and defense applications), manganese (steel production and battery chemistry), and uranium (nuclear fuel).

The concentration of these deposits in Ukraine's southeast — in territories partially occupied by Russia or in contested operational areas — is the central complication that transforms an impressive geological map into a complex investment proposition. Much of the most valuable mineral wealth sits under ground that is either occupied by Russian forces, within artillery range of front lines, or in areas whose security situation cannot be predicted on any planning horizon that private investors can use for capital allocation decisions.

The war zone premium: what it costs investors

Investment in mineral development in Ukraine requires pricing the war zone premium — the additional return needed to compensate investors for the risk of physical destruction, operational disruption, legal uncertainty, and exit difficulty that active conflict creates. Conventional mineral investment models assume a stable legal and security environment that allows multi-year development programs to proceed according to plan. Ukraine provides neither stability guarantee nor predictable security — creating a war zone premium that most private capital cannot justify without the de-risking tools that the DFC-MIGA framework is designed to provide.

Preliminary assessments by the investment banks and private equity firms that have examined the Ukraine minerals opportunity suggest that even with the DFC-MIGA framework, the war zone premium would require returns significantly above market norms to attract institutional capital. This is not an argument against the framework — it is an argument for the framework being as robust and as quickly deployed as possible. Every month of delay in establishing the insurance mechanism is a month during which the war zone premium remains the decisive barrier to private investment.

I try to imagine myself as a pension fund manager asked to invest in a lithium mine in eastern Ukraine. The geological potential is real. The strategic value is real. The war is also real. My fiduciaries require me to price the risk, and no pricing model can account for the specific trajectory of a war that might end next year or might continue for a decade. The DFC-MIGA framework is an attempt to make that pricing calculable. Until it is operational, the lithium stays underground. This is the commercial reality that the agreement's political ambitions must navigate.

What Trump's team presented

The April 2025 signing ceremony was accompanied by rhetoric from the Trump administration that implied a transformation in US-Ukraine economic relations — the creation of a commercial basis for US engagement with Ukraine that would sustain American support independent of the political will of any particular administration. The minerals deal was presented as a deal in the transactional language that the Trump administration favors: America gets access to Ukraine's resources; Ukraine gets American investment and security interest; everyone wins.

This framing was politically useful for an administration whose domestic constituency was skeptical of foreign policy based on values rather than transactions. Dressing Ukraine support in the language of deal-making rather than democracy promotion made it politically sustainable to audiences that had grown impatient with the idealistic framing of the Biden era. The question was whether the transaction was as real as the framing implied — whether American companies would actually invest at scale in Ukrainian minerals on the basis of a $150 million joint fund and a political risk insurance framework still under development.

What was actually committed

What was actually committed in April 2025: a $150 million bilateral fund ($75M DFC + $75M Ukraine), an operational activation in December 2025, and a framework agreement for joint exploitation that established legal and governance structures without guaranteeing private capital investment. What was implied but not committed: the multi-billion-dollar US private capital flows that would make the strategic minerals narrative operationally significant.

The distance between commitment and implication is the gap that June 2026 is revealing. The fund is operational. The DFC-MIGA framework has been announced. American companies have not arrived in the Donbas to drill for lithium. The agreement is real; the transformation it implied is still aspirational. This is the 2025 promise versus 2026 reality — not failure, but not yet fulfillment.

I do not hold the April 2025 deal against anyone who supported it. The strategic logic is sound. Ukraine's minerals matter. American investment interest is real. A legal framework for joint development is necessary. What I question is the gap between the deal's political framing — which implied transformative American economic engagement — and its operational reality — which is a $150 million fund in a war zone with insurance instruments still being designed. Managing that gap honestly is what responsible commentary requires.

What the fund has actually done

Since its December 2025 activation, the $150 million joint fund has pursued geological assessment work in accessible Ukrainian territories, engaged Ukrainian regulatory authorities on the permitting frameworks needed for joint exploration, and begun discussions with several American companies about potential partnership structures. This work is foundational — it produces the geological and legal data that future investment decisions will require. It is also, by the standards of the strategic minerals narrative, modest.

No mineral extraction has commenced. No significant American private capital has been committed beyond the DFC's initial $75 million. The fund's activity reflects the realistic pace of minerals development work in a wartime environment: careful, compliance-heavy, fundamentally about preparing for the larger investment that the peace environment will eventually enable. The fund is doing what it was designed to do — laying groundwork. The question is whether the groundwork is being laid fast enough and on a sufficiently ambitious scale to match what the strategic imperative requires.

The companies that have shown interest

Several American mining and resources companies have expressed interest in the Ukraine minerals opportunity through the DFC framework — most without public disclosure, some with early MOU-level engagements that establish a framework for potential future investment. The interest is genuine; the deposits are real; the strategic logic of reducing rare earth and lithium dependence on China is compelling to American industrial and defense supply chain planners.

None of these expressions of interest have translated into capital deployment at scale. The MOU pipeline is what investment bankers call "interesting but not actionable" — real enough to be worth maintaining, insufficient to constitute the transformative American investment presence that April 2025's political framing suggested was imminent. The Gdańsk DFC-MIGA announcement is the mechanism that could convert interest into action. When it is operational, the pipeline may begin to move. For now, it is waiting.

I have followed the interest of American mining companies in Ukrainian minerals for long enough to know that interest is not investment. Expressions of strategic interest, MOUs, and framework discussions are the language companies use when they want to preserve an option without bearing a cost. Converting that option into actual investment requires the risk-adjusted return calculation to turn positive — and that turn requires the DFC-MIGA insurance framework to become operational. June 25's announcement brings that moment closer. It has not yet arrived.

The conditions for actual capital deployment

Translating the minerals agreement from its current operational-but-modest state into the transformative investment relationship its political framing implied requires three things happening in sequence. First, the DFC-MIGA insurance framework must become operational — with deployed insurance capacity, pricing that the market can use, and the institutional credibility to give private investors confidence in the protection mechanism. This is the single most important near-term milestone.

Second, legal and regulatory certainty in Ukraine about the terms of foreign mineral investment must be established and sustained — consistent frameworks for licenses, royalties, environmental compliance, and dispute resolution that private investors can incorporate into their risk models. Ukraine has made progress on this dimension through its EU accession reform agenda, but wartime conditions create inherent uncertainty that even good legislation cannot fully resolve.

The peace dividend: when investment follows security

Third — and ultimately decisive — a security horizon that makes multi-year investment planning viable. No industrial-scale mineral development program can be planned or financed in a country whose territorial control over the relevant deposits is uncertain and whose infrastructure can be destroyed between the planning decision and the operational commencement. The largest flows of capital into Ukrainian minerals will follow a ceasefire or peace settlement that establishes the security conditions for confident investment planning.

This is the ultimate reason why the 2025 promise has not yet become the 2026 reality. Not bad faith. Not inadequate institutional design. Not insufficient political will on either side. The war is still ongoing, the deposits are often in contested or occupied territory, and private capital cannot flow to where it cannot be protected. The promise will become reality when the security conditions change. The June 25 DFC-MIGA announcement is preparation for that change. It is not the change itself.

The minerals agreement is a bet on Ukraine's future — on the assumption that a Ukraine at peace will be a Ukraine where enormous mineral wealth can be developed in partnership with American companies, creating the economic basis for sustained mutual interest that political declarations alone cannot provide. I believe in this bet. I also believe it requires the patience of someone making a long-term investment rather than expecting a quick return. The 2026 reality is the early innings of a very long game. The score is not yet the story.

The minerals deal cannot replace NATO guarantees

The minerals agreement was sold, in its initial framing, as a partial substitute for the security guarantees that Ukraine had been seeking from NATO. The idea: if the United States has direct economic interests in Ukraine, it will have an additional reason to defend it. This logic has a certain transactional coherence. But it also has limits: an investment in a fund is not an Article 5 commitment. Capital protected by insurance mechanisms is not the same as a country protected by a military alliance.

Zelensky has been clear about this distinction. The minerals agreement is useful — it aligns US economic interests with Ukraine's survival. But it does not answer the fundamental question of what happens when the next aggression begins, whether from Russia or from another direction. The security architecture that Ukraine actually needs — membership in NATO or an equivalent binding commitment — remains politically unavailable. The minerals deal fills a gap; it does not fill that gap.

What the Gdańsk conference achieved — and did not achieve

The Ukraine Recovery Conference in Gdańsk in late June 2026 produced the DFC-MIGA insurance announcement — a genuine institutional advance that makes private capital deployment in Ukrainian minerals extraction more feasible. It also produced a series of bilateral commitments from G7 members on reconstruction financing. What it did not produce is the binding security commitment that would make large-scale private investment in strategically important sectors genuinely viable.

Investors considering multi-year capital commitments in Ukrainian mineral extraction are making a bet not just on the legal framework or the insurance mechanism — they are making a bet on the political durability of Western commitment to Ukraine's sovereignty and security. That bet is currently priced into their cost of capital. Closing the security gap — through NATO membership or a credible equivalent — would be the single most powerful action available to lower the cost of capital for Ukrainian reconstruction investment.

You cannot replace security guarantees with a lithium contract. Zelensky knows this. Trump knows it too, at some level. The minerals agreement is useful. But what Ukraine has been asking for since 2022 is protection that neither a fund nor an insurance mechanism can provide. Filling that gap requires political courage of a different order — the kind that binds future administrations, not just the current one. The minerals deal is real progress. It is not the answer.

Risk insurance as a catalyst for private investment

The signing of the DFC-MIGA agreement in Gdańsk on June 25, 2026 is the most recent step in the operationalization of the fund. Its objective is clear: to attract international private investors who had hesitated to commit to Ukraine due to political and military risk. MIGA, the World Bank's guarantees branch, specializes in exactly this type of instrument in high-risk countries. Its involvement gives the insurance mechanism genuine institutional credibility — the kind that private investors need to make large commitments viable in their risk models.

The practical effect of the DFC-MIGA framework should be to lower the effective cost of capital for approved mineral investment projects in Ukraine. By providing political risk insurance — coverage against contract renegotiation, nationalization, war damage to covered assets — the framework shifts part of the risk from private investors to international public institutions. This is how development finance is supposed to work: public risk absorption that unlocks private capital at scales that public funding alone cannot reach. The Gdańsk announcement is the mechanism in place. The capital deployment is the next test.

What comes next: the operational roadmap

Following the Gdańsk announcement, the next milestones for the minerals partnership are: insurance policies issued to specific private investors for specific projects; capital commitments from major mining or industrial companies with the legal certainty to proceed; first operational surveys and extraction preparations at the priority deposit sites identified in the fund's work program; and the first concrete revenue flows from operational projects back into the fund for reinvestment. Each of these milestones will test whether the institutional framework built over 2025-2026 has the depth to convert into genuine economic reality.

The timeline for these milestones depends critically on developments outside the minerals partnership's control — the military situation, the availability of infrastructure for extraction and export, the regulatory environment, and the political durability of the agreement across electoral cycles in both Washington and Kyiv. The best-case scenario is first significant extraction activity within 18-24 months of a ceasefire. The realistic scenario is longer. The framework built in 2025-2026 is the foundation. The structure remains to be built.

The MIGA at Gdańsk is the international community saying: we trust Ukraine for the long term. That matters more than it might seem. In a context where some doubt the durability of Western support, this signature is an act of institutional faith — a public statement that the bet on Ukraine's future is worth making. I believe it is. I also believe the follow-through will be what gives this moment its lasting meaning.

What changed and what did not

Between the April 2025 signing and the June 2026 Gdańsk DFC-MIGA announcement, the minerals agreement moved from political declaration to operational framework — a genuine institutional advance. The $150 million fund is active. The insurance mechanism has been announced. American companies have expressed serious interest. The strategic logic of the partnership remains compelling and unchanged.

The promise that remains

What has not changed: the war continues, the most valuable deposits remain in contested or occupied territory, private capital has not arrived at transformative scale, and the strategic minerals narrative has not yet been matched by the industrial reality it promises. The promise of April 2025 is alive — and the June 2026 reality is its cautious, conditional, but genuine institutional foundation. The promise and the reality are converging. They have not yet met. But the path between them is now visible, and the institutions walking it are real.

The minerals agreement will survive the war. The real question is: in what form? A rebuilt, secured Ukraine confident in its rights will renegotiate what the necessity of 2025 imposed on it. And that will be legitimate. War contracts deserve to be reviewed in peacetime. What I hope is that the partnership built on these minerals will have proven, by then, its worth to both sides — making renegotiation a refinement of success rather than a correction of failure.

By Maxime Marquette, columnist

Editorial stance

I am not a journalist but a columnist and analyst. My expertise lies in observing and analysing the geopolitical, economic and strategic dynamics that shape our world. My work is to take political strategies apart, to understand global economic movements, to put the decisions of international actors in context and to offer analytical perspectives on the changes that are redefining our societies.

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