Kathmandu. US Treasury Secretary Scott Besant told Ukraine’s prime minister in a meeting in Washington on Wednesday that the two countries should sign a key resource extraction agreement “as soon as possible.”
Prime Minister Dennis Schmihl was on a visit to the United States until Saturday. His aim was to hammer out a deal that would pay the US royalties from mining profits from Ukrainian resources and rare earths.
US President Donald Trump wants the deal as compensation for aid his predecessor Joe Biden gave to Ukraine after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022. However, a confrontation between Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelensky in February stalled the deal. According to a Treasury Department brief, Besant told Smihl on Wednesday about the “need to conclude technical negotiations and sign the Economic Partnership Agreement between the United States and Ukraine as soon as possible.”
Besant reportedly called the talks between the two sides “very productive.” The United States has been pressuring Ukraine for weeks to accept the peace deal. The deal could force Kiev to give up some of its territory currently under Russian control. Washington has threatened to walk away from peace talks if Russia and Ukraine do not reach an agreement soon. Trump said on Wednesday that he believed Russia had accepted its part of the peace deal, just hours before Moscow launched missile strikes on Kiev early Thursday.
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