By Jack Matlock, Responsible Statecraft, 3/3/25

Jack F. Matlock, Jr. is a career diplomat who served as U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991. Prior to that he was Senior Director for European and Soviet Affairs on President Reagan’s National Security Council staff and was U.S. Ambassador to Czechoslovakia from 1981-1983.

Finally, there is a prospect for bringing the war in Ukraine to an end. President Trump and his foreign policy team have created the conditions for a negotiated end to the war, replacing a fundamentally flawed and dangerous set of policies adopted by his predecessors including, ironically, the Donald Trump of his first administration.

This is true even after the very public blowout in the Oval Office on Feb. 28. What brought on Trump’s ire was Zelensky’s comments on the minerals deal and then his repeated complaints about negotiating with Putin, something Trump has made clear he will do. Trump had apparently expected a quick signing ceremony to convince Ukraine supporters in his own party like Senator Lindsey Graham — who were invited to witness — that a negotiated peace would be advantageous to the United States. When Zelensky turned the meeting into a debating session and aroused Trump’s memories of the bogus “Russiagate” charges that plagued his first administration, Trump reacted predictably.

Indeed, anyone interested in peace rather than the threat of nuclear war should be congratulating President Trump. After all, if the war does end and Russia is brought back into cooperative economic relations with Europe and the United States, everyone will benefit. If the war and the attempted isolation of Russia continues, all will suffer and cooperation to deal with common problems such as environmental degradation, mass migration and international financial crime will become impossible.

I say this not as a Trump supporter — I did not vote for him and have been critical of most of his moves. But in regard to the war in Ukraine and relations with Russia, I believe he is on the right track.

My judgments are based on decades of diplomatic experience negotiating the end of the Cold War and on a close knowledge of both Ukraine and Russia, their languages and their history. I am proud that my generation of diplomats achieved a Europe whole and free by peaceful negotiation. I have been appalled that a succession of American presidents and European leaders discarded the diplomacy that ended the Cold War, abandoned the agreements that curbed the nuclear arms race, and provoked a new cold war which has now become hot.

President Trump’s restoration of the diplomacy that President Reagan and the first President Bush used to end the Cold War should be welcomed. Reestablishment of direct communication between the Russian and American presidents is an essential precondition for any settlement.

The agenda announced by Secretary of State Rubio and Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov after their meeting in Riyadh makes sense: (1) expansion of diplomatic capacity between the U.S. and Russia, dangerously eroded by a series of mutual expulsions, (2) cooperation on common geopolitical and commercial interests, and (3) ending the war in Ukraine.

Days before the agreement was announced in Riyadh, Vice President Vance and Secretary of Defense Hegseth made policy statements at the Wehrkunde conference in Munich that raised the ire of some European allies and prominent politicians and journalists in the United States.

In fact, these comments were either statements of fact (Ukraine is not a member of NATO) or of policy adjustments that are not only essential if the war is to end but in fact would have prevented the war if they had been adopted by earlier presidents: (Ukraine will not become a member of NATO; direct American involvement in the fighting will end; the U.S. will not act to protect European NATO forces deployed in Ukraine.)

If these had been the policies of previous American administrations, the war in Ukraine would not have occurred. They are not capitulations in advance or appeasement as some critics have charged. They get at the roots of the war.

President Zelensky, French president Emmanuel Macron, British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, among others have objected to Trump’s plan to negotiate with Russia first, then bring in the others. Actually, bilateral talks between the U.S. and Russia make sense. Former Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin let the cat out of the bag when he observed that the purpose of supporting Ukraine was to weaken Russia. That policy has to end if there is to be peace in Europe in the future and it must be negotiated by the U.S. and Russia.

This is exactly the procedure used by the first Bush administration to negotiate the unification of Germany. In 1990 the United States first engaged in bilateral talks with Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev before referring the agreements to the other four parties involved in German unification: Britain and France because of their rights in agreements that ended World War II, and the two German states directly affected. The other parties were kept informed of these negotiations as they progressed and all accepted the outcome.

As a participant in these negotiations, I can testify that assurances were given to Gorbachev orally by the American secretary of state, James Baker, that NATO jurisdiction would not move to the east if the Soviets agreed to let East Germany join West Germany on conditions specified by West Germany. Soviet approval was required because of agreements that ended

World War II. Declassified documents now available also show that British prime minister, John Major, and also the West German foreign minister, Hans-Dietrich Genscher, gave similar assurances. In fact, it had been Genscher’s idea.

It is these assurances to which President Vladimir Putin refers repeatedly as broken promises. Although they were not formalized in a treaty, they were promises and they have been broken. President Putin is neither lying nor engaging in baseless propaganda when he says so.

It is often alleged that Russia has nothing to fear from NATO because it is purely a defensive alliance. Yes, it was conceived as a defensive alliance to protect Western Europe from an attack by the Soviet Union. But, after Eastern Europe was liberated and the Soviet Union shattered into fifteen countries, Russia was not a threat or even a potential threat. In the late 1990s NATO began to be used as an offensive alliance.

Proposals to construct a security structure for Europe that would protect all countries were simply sidelined by the United States and its allies. None seemed to ask what they would do if the shoe were on the other foot and how they would react to the prospect of military bases by a hostile alliance on their borders.

If American behavior throughout its history as an independent state is any guide, the prospect of military bases controlled by a foreign power near its borders — in fact, anywhere in the Western Hemisphere — has been a casus belli if not removed.

The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 provided an illustration of how the United States reacts to a perceived threat from abroad. I was stationed in the American Embassy in Moscow when the Soviet Union deployed nuclear missiles in Cuba and have vivid memories of this crisis.

I translated some of the messages Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev sent to President John F. Kennedy. If Khrushchev had not backed down and removed the missiles, Kennedy would have attacked, but if he did local commanders could have launched nuclear missiles against Miami and other cities with the U.S. responding with strikes on the Soviet Union. So Kennedy made a deal: you take your missiles off Cuba and I will remove ours in Turkey. It worked, and the world breathed easier.

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine was initiated by President Putin because he believed, with reason, that the United States was trying to draw Ukraine into a hostile military alliance. Therefore, in his eyes it was provoked. In 2003 the United States invaded, devastated and occupied Iraq when Iraq posed no threat to the United States. So now, how is it that the U.S. and its allies are conducting an all-but-declared war against Russia for crimes they themselves have not only committed, but have committed with less provocation? The pot is calling the kettle black and trying to damage it.

This is not to justify the Russian invasion in Ukraine. Far from it. It is a catastrophe for both nations and its effects will be felt for generations, but the killing must stop if Europe is to deal effectively with the many challenges it confronts now.

We cannot know what deal President Trump has in mind or how President Putin will respond. The negotiations will be difficult and, most likely, lengthy. But, at last, the American president has defined a viable road to peace and the Russian president has greeted this effort. This is a welcome start of a process Americans and Europeans should support.

By Stephen Bryen, Substack, 2/28/25

Because events at the White House with President Trump and Ukrainian President Zelensky were so dramatic, I thought it would, perhaps, be useful to take a moment to discuss the big events of today at the White House where Zelensky met Trump. It is unprecedented that a visiting dignitary would behave the way Zelensky did, or for that matter show up in a tight fitting sweatshirt and slacks, something Mr. Trump disliked.

To begin with, there was no private meeting with Trump and Zelensky.

Here is some context:

1. Trump and Putin are very close to a deal on Ukraine. I released an article on that earlier today on Substack.

2. Trump invited Macron and Starmer to Washington to brief them, which he apparently did. The French went away fairly unhappy, but Starmer seemed to be in general agreement. Starmer made a pitch to include Article 5 and NATO in any deal; Trump rejected that appeal. Putin, meanwhile, talked to Xi by telephone and sent Sergei Shoigu (who heads Russia’s Security Council, something like the NSC) to Beijing to meet with Xi.

3. Trump invited Zelensky. The cover for Zelensky’s appearance in Washington was the “Minerals Deal” which the two leaders were supposed to sign.

4. The Minerals Deal was actually a sort of security guarantee for Ukraine, as Ukraine and the US would become “partners.” While Trump is unwilling to send US troops to Ukraine, he saw the Minerals Deal as a security substitute.

5. The Minerals Deal was not signed.

6. The real reason for the Zelensky visit was to brief him on the Putin negotiations and to gain his support.

7. Zelensky was not briefed because he vociferously and harshly objected to any negotiations with Putin. He did this in public, to Trump’s face, and in front of the press. As I have said many times before, Zelensky cannot negotiate with Russia.

8. Trump told Zelensky he was gambling with World War 3 and that he was in a poor position. Zelensky tried to answer back, but each time was rebuffed both by Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance.

9. The result is there was no private meeting and Trump told Zelensky he would be welcomed back only when he was ready for peace.

10. Usually there is a press conference at the end of a visit to the White House. That was cancelled and, in essence, Zelensky was dismissed.

11. The next steps are unclear, as Trump’s attempt to cut a deal with Russia is now blocked by Zelensky’s refusal to cooperate.

Some guesses:

Guess 1. Trump will retaliate by cutting off arms deliveries to Ukraine and cutting off any US money to the Ukrainian government. If that happens, Ukraine’s army will disintegrate in the next couple of months, or sooner.

Guess 2. Trump will put together some kind of deal with Russia not including Ukraine. This could be an economic deal, or it could be a deal that lifts sanctions on Russia.

Guess 3. It is unlikely Trump will change course on Russia and Ukraine, unless Zelensky changes his position or is replaced in some way.

Guess 4. Trump may ask the Europeans to stop backing Ukraine under current circumstances. It seems the British may cooperate, but not the French. The Germans right now don’t have a government, so they are unpredictable. Trump will talk to the Germans about helping them improve their economy in exchange for geopolitical cooperation. We will see.

Guess 5. Trump will let Ukraine collapse but may seek a deal with Putin on Ukraine once Zelensky is gone.

YouTube link here.

Vice President JD Vance opens up about the heated meeting involving President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on ‘Hannity.’

I think Elon Musk, like Bill Gates and George Soros, is a dangerous megalomaniac who views the world as his personal Frankenstein laboratory. If a regular guy had the kinds of ideas these billionaires have, they would simply be viewed as the neighborhood kook, but because these uber-wealthy men have insane amounts of money and clout they can implement their kooky ideas to the detriment of humanity. – Natylie

YouTube link here.

By Alan MacLeod, MintPress News, 2/11/25

Donald Trump has announced his intention to build a gigantic anti-ballistic missile system to counter Chinese and Russian nuclear weapons, and he is recruiting Elon Musk to help him. The Pentagon has long dreamed of constructing an American “Iron Dome.” The technology is couched in the defense language – i.e., to make America safe again. But like its Israeli counterpart, it would function as an offensive weapon, giving the United States the ability to launch nuclear attacks anywhere in the world without having to worry about the consequences of a similar response. This power could upend the fragile peace maintained by decades of mutually assured destruction, a doctrine that has underpinned global stability since the 1940s.

A New Global Arms Race

Washington’s war planners have long salivated at the thought of winning a nuclear confrontation and have sought the ability to do so for decades. Some believe that they have found a solution and a savior in the South African-born billionaire and his technology.

Neoconservative think tank the Heritage Foundation published a video last year stating that Musk might have “solved the nuclear threat coming from China.” It claimed that Starlink satellites from his SpaceX company could be easily modified to carry weapons that could shoot down incoming rockets. As they explain:

Elon Musk has proven that you can put microsatellites into orbit, for $1 million apiece. Using that same technology, we can put 1,000 microsatellites in continuous orbit around the Earth, that can track, engage and shoot down, using tungsten slugs, missiles that are launched from North Korea, Iran, Russia, and China.”

Although the Heritage Foundation advises using tungsten slugs (i.e., bullets) as interceptors, hypersonic missiles have been opted for instead. To this end, a new organization, the Castelion Company, was established in 2023.

Castelion is a SpaceX cutout; six of the seven members of its leadership team and two of its four senior advisors are ex-senior SpaceX employees. The other two advisors are former high officials from the Central Intelligence Agency, including Mike Griffin, Musk’s longtime friend, mentor, and partner.

Castelion’s mission, in its own words, is to be at the cutting edge of a new global arms race. As the company explains:

Despite the U.S. annual defense budget exceeding those of the next ten biggest spenders combined, there’s irrefutable evidence that authoritarian regimes are taking the lead in key military technologies like hypersonic weapons. Simply put – this cannot be allowed to happen.”

The company has already secured gigantic contracts with the U.S. military, and reports suggest that it has made significant strides toward its hypersonic missile goals.

War And Peace

Castelion’s slogan is “Peace Through Deterrence.” But in reality, the U.S. achieving a breakthrough in hypersonic missile technology would rupture the fragile nuclear peace that has existed for over 70 years and usher in a new era where Washington would have the ability to use whatever weapons it wished, anywhere in the world at any time, safe in the knowledge that it would be impervious to a nuclear response from any other nation.

In short, the fear of a nuclear retaliation from Russia or China has been one of the few forces moderating U.S. aggression throughout the world. If this is lost, the United States would have free rein to turn entire countries – or even regions of the planet – into vapor. This would, in turn, hand it the power to terrorize the world and impose whatever economic and political system anywhere it wishes.

If this sounds fanciful, this “Nuclear Blackmail” was a more-or-less official policy of successive American administrations in the 1940s and 1950s. The United States remains the only country ever to drop an atomic bomb in anger, doing so twice in 1945 against a Japanese foe that was already defeated and was attempting to surrender.

President Truman ordered the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki as a show of force, primarily to the Soviet Union. Many in the U.S. government wished to use the atomic bomb on the U.S.S.R. President Truman immediately, however, reasoned that if America nuked Moscow, the Red Army would invade Europe as a response.

As such, he decided to wait until the U.S. had enough warheads to completely destroy the Soviet Union and its military. War planners calculated this figure at around 400, and to that end—totaling a nation representing one-sixth of the world’s landmass—the president ordered the immediate ramping up of production.

This decision was met with stiff opposition among the American scientific community, and it is widely believed that Manhattan Project scientists, including Robert J. Oppenheimer himself, passed nuclear secrets to Moscow in an effort to speed up their nuclear project and develop a deterrent to halt this doomsday scenario.

In the end, the Soviet Union was able to successfully develop a nuclear weapon before the U.S. was able to produce hundreds. Thus, the idea of wiping the U.S.S.R. from the face of the Earth was shelved. Incidentally, it is now understood that the effects of dropping hundreds of nuclear weapons simultaneously would likely have sparked vast firestorms across Russia, resulting in the emission of enough smoke to choke the Earth’s atmosphere, block out the sun’s rays for a decade, and end organized human life on the planet.

With the Russian nuclear window closing by 1949, the U.S. turned its nuclear arsenal on the nascent People’s Republic of China.

The U.S. invaded China in 1945, occupying parts of it for four years until Communist forces under Mao Zedong forced both them and their Nationalist KMT allies from the country. During the Korean War, some of the most powerful voices in Washington advocated dropping nuclear weapons on the 12 largest Chinese cities in response to China entering the fray. Indeed, both Truman and his successor, Dwight D. Eisenhower, publicly used the threat of the atomic bomb as a negotiating tactic.

Routed on the mainland, the U.S.-backed KMT fled to Taiwan, establishing a one-party state. In 1958, the U.S. also came close to dropping the bomb on China to protect its ally’s new regime over control of the disputed island – an episode of history that resonates with the present-day conflict over Taiwan.

However, by 1964, China had developed its own nuclear warhead, effectively ending U.S. pretensions and helping to usher in the détente era of good relations between the two powers—an epoch that lasted well into the 21st century.

In short, then, it is only the existence of a credible deterrent that tempers Washington’s actions around the world. Since the end of the Second World War, the United States has only attacked relatively defenseless countries. The reason the North Korean government remains in place, but those of Libya, Iraq, Syria, and others do not, is the existence of the former’s large-scale conventional and nuclear forces. Developing an American Iron Dome could upset this delicate balance and usher in a new age of U.S. military dominance.

Nuking Japan? OK. Nuking Mars? Even Better!

Musk, however, has downplayed both the probability and the consequences of nuclear war. On The Lex Friedman Podcast, he described the likelihood of a terminal confrontation as “quite low.” And while speaking with Trump last year, he claimed that nuclear holocaust is “not as scary as people think,” noting that “Hiroshima and Nagasaki were bombed, but now they are full cities again.” President Trump agreed.

According to the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons, there are over 12,000 warheads in the world, the vast majority of them owned by Russia and the United States. While many consider them a blight on humanity and favor their complete eradication, Musk advocates building thousands more, sending them into space, and firing them at Mars.

Musk’s quixotic plan is to terraform the Red Planet by firing at least 10,000 nuclear missiles at it. The heat generated by the bombs would melt its polar ice caps, releasing carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. The rapid greenhouse effect triggered, the theory goes, would raise Mars’ temperatures (and air pressure) to the point of supporting human life.

Few scientists have endorsed this idea. Indeed, Dmitry Rogozin, then-head of Russian state space agency Roscosmos, labeled the theory completely absurd and nothing more than a cover for filling space with American nuclear weapons aimed at Russia, China, and other nations, drawing Washington’s ire.

“We understand that one thing is hidden behind this demagogy: This is a cover for the launch of nuclear weapons into space,” he said. “We see such attempts, we consider them unacceptable, and we will hinder this to the greatest extent possible,” he added.

The first Trump administration’s actions, including withdrawing from multiple international anti-ballistic missile treaties, have made this process more difficult.

Elon And The Military-Industrial-Complex

Until he entered the Trump White House, many still perceived Musk as a radical tech industry outsider. Yet this was never the case. From virtually the beginning of his career, Musk’s path has been shaped by his exceptionally close relationship with the U.S. national security state, particularly with Mike Griffin of the CIA.

From 2002 to 2005, Griffin led In-Q-Tel, the CIA’s venture capitalist wing. In-Q-Tel is an organization dedicated to identifying, nurturing, and working with tech companies that can provide Washington with cutting-edge technologies, keeping it one step ahead of its competition.

Griffin was an early believer in Musk. In February 2002, he accompanied Musk to Russia, where the pair attempted to purchase cut-price intercontinental ballistic missiles to start SpaceX. Griffin spoke up for Musk in government meetings, backing him as a potential “Henry Ford” of the tech and military-industrial complex.

After In-Q-Tel, Griffin became the chief administrator of NASA. In 2018, President Trump appointed him the Under Secretary of Defense for Research and Engineering. While at NASA, Griffin brought Musk in for meetings and secured SpaceX’s big break. In 2006, NASA awarded the company a $396 million rocket development contract – a remarkable “gamble,” in Griffin’s words, especially as it had never launched a rocket. National Geographic wrote that SpaceX “never would have gotten to where it is today without NASA.” And Griffin was essential to this development. Still, by 2008, both SpaceX and Tesla Motors were in dire straits, with Musk unable to make payroll and assuming both businesses would go bankrupt. It was at that point that SpaceX was saved by an unexpected $1.6 billion NASA contract for commercial cargo services.

Today, the pair remain extremely close, with Griffin serving as an official advisor to Castelion. A sign of just how strong this relationship is that, in 2004, Musk named his son “Griffin” after his CIA handler.

Today, SpaceX is a powerhouse, with yearly revenues in the tens of billions and a valuation of $350 billion. But that wealth comes largely from orders from Washington. Indeed, there are few customers for rockets other than the military or the various three-letter spying agencies.

In 2018, SpaceX won a contract to blast a $500 million Lockheed Martin GPS into orbit. While military spokespersons played up the civilian benefits of the launch, the primary reason for the project was to improve America’s surveillance and targeting capabilities. SpaceX has also won contracts with the Air Force to deliver its command satellite into orbit, with the Space Development Agency to send tracking devices into space, and with the National Reconnaissance Office to launch its spy satellites. All the “big five” surveillance agencies, including the CIA and the NSA, use these satellites.

Therefore, in today’s world, where so much intelligence gathering and target acquisition is done via satellite technology, SpaceX has become every bit as important to the American empire as Boeing, Raytheon, and General Dynamics. Simply put, without Musk and SpaceX, the U.S. would not be able to carry out such an invasive program of spying or drone warfare around the world.

Global Power

An example of how crucial Musk and his tech empire are to the continuation of U.S. global ambitions can be found in Ukraine. Today, around 47,000 Starlinks operate inside the country. These portable satellite dishes, manufactured by SpaceX, have kept both Ukraine’s civilian and military online. Many of these were directly purchased by the U.S. government via USAID or the Pentagon and shipped to Kiev.

In its hi-tech war against Russia, Starlink has become the keystone of the Ukrainian military. It allows for satellite-based target acquisition and drone attacks on Russian forces. Indeed, on today’s battlefield, many weapons require an internet connection. One Ukrainian official told The Times of London that he “must” use Starlink to target enemy forces via thermal imaging.

The controversial mogul has also involved himself in South American politics. In 2019, he supported the U.S.-backed overthrow of socialist president Evo Morales. Morales suggested that Musk financed the insurrection, which he dubbed a “lithium coup.” When directly charged with his involvement, Musk infamously replied, “We will coup whoever we want! Deal with it!” Bolivia is home to the world’s largest lithium reserves, a metal crucial in producing batteries for electric vehicles such as the ones in Musk’s Tesla cars.

In Venezuela last year, Musk went even further, supporting the U.S.-backed far-right candidate against socialist president Nicolás Maduro. He even went so far as to suggest he was working on a plan to kidnap the sitting president. “I’m coming for you Maduro. I will carry you to Gitmo on a donkey,” he said, referencing the notorious U.S. torture center.

More recently, Musk has thrown himself into American politics, funding and campaigning for President Trump, and will now lead Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). DOGE’s stated mission is to cut unnecessary and wasteful government spending. However, with Musk at the helm, it seems unlikely that the billions of dollars in military contracts and tax incentives his companies have received will be on the chopping block.

At Trump’s inauguration, Musk garnered international headlines after he gave two Sieg Heil salutes – gestures that his daughter felt were unambiguously Nazi. Musk – who comes from a historically Nazi-supporting family – took time out from criticizing the reaction to his salute to appear at a rally for the Alternative für Deutschland Party. There, he said that Germans place “too much focus on past guilt” (i.e., the Holocaust) and that “we need to move beyond that.” “Children should not feel guilty for the sins of their parents – their great-grandparents even,” he added to raucous applause.

The tech tycoon’s recent actions have provoked outrage among many Americans, claiming that fascists and Nazis do not belong anywhere near the U.S. space and defense programs. In reality, however, these projects, from the very beginning, were overseen by top German scientists brought over after the fall of Nazi Germany. Operation Paperclip transported more than 1,600 German scientists to America, including the father of the American lunar project, Wernher von Braun. Von Braun was a member of both the Nazi Party and the infamous elite SS paramilitary, whose members oversaw Hitler’s extermination camps.

Thus, Nazism and the American empire have, for a long time, gone hand in hand. Far more disturbing than a man with fascist sympathies being in a position of power in the U.S. military or space industry, however, is the ability the United States is seeking for itself to be impervious to intercontinental missile attacks from its competitors.

On the surface, Washington’s Iron Dome plan may sound defensive in nature. But in reality, it would give it a free hand to attack any country or entity around the world in any way it wishes – including with nuclear weapons. This would upend the fragile nuclear peace that has reigned since the early days of the Cold War. Elon Musk’s help in this endeavor is much more worrying and dangerous than any salutes or comments he could ever make.

Alan MacLeod is Senior Staff Writer for MintPress News. After completing his PhD in 2017 he published two books: Bad News From Venezuela: Twenty Years of Fake News and Misreporting and Propaganda in the Information Age: Still Manufacturing Consent, as well as anumberofacademicarticles. He has also contributed to FAIR.org, The Guardian, Salon, The Grayzone, Jacobin Magazine, and Common Dreams.

By Ben Aris, Intellinews, 2/24/25

Note: this article is from 2/24/25 and obviously much has happened since then and the deal between Ukraine and the US is apparently dead, but this is useful information to know. – Natylie

Lots of action over the weekend as US President Donald Trump doubled down on his $500bn “rare earth metals” deal with Ukraine, sending a revised agreement after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy complained the first one was too harsh. Trump made the new offer even harsher.

Unsurprisingly, Zelenskiy rejected this one too, but he has stopped being polite about it. At a press conference he said that Ukraine was being asked to pay a $50bn surcharge on every $100bn it earned from mining minerals and that it might produce, and if that was the case on any aid it would open a Pandora’s box. Moreover, he pointed out that the money the US gave him was in the form of grants, ie does not have to be paid back. It’s not debt, he said. Zelenskiy refuses to sign off on a deal that will mortgage “the next ten generations of Ukrainians.”

He is of course completely right. As bne IntelliNews reported, Trump is in effect asking Ukraine to pay reparations on a war where it is not the aggressor; it’s the victim. Russia should be the one paying, but instead it looks very much like it will be offered deals instead.

They are dancing in the corridors of the Kremlin. It was suggested Russia might be willing to give up its frozen $300bn as part of the bargain (if part of that money is spent on redeveloping the regions it annexed) and even more extraordinarily, Russian President Vladimir Putin ordered his government to prepare the way for Western companies to return to Russia. Boeing was singled out, which is desperate to buy Russian titanium again. Putin also said that Russia should start mining its own considerable deposits of lithium.

Zelenskiy was incautious in his rejection of Trump’s mineral deal. It’s becoming increasingly clear that Trump really doesn’t like Zelenskiy at all. Presumably he is still angry over the Hunter Biden investigation affair from his first term in office and Trump is such a child that he bears long and deep-seated grudges.

But he is still talking to Bankova because he wants basically all of Ukraine’s natural resources, especially its treasure trove of r”are earth metals.”

Except Ukraine doesn’t have any rare earth metals.

It does have metals and minerals. It is home to significant deposits of lithium, titanium and copper, for example. But these are not “rare earth” metals, but normal, “strategically important” metals.

Rare earth metals (REMs) are a group of 17 elements in the periodic table, including the 15 lanthanides, that sit in a row at the bottom of that block in the middle of the periodic table most people don’t know anything about, plus scandium and yttrium (in the third column). All have similar and useful, albeit esoteric, properties.

The strategically important metals on the other hand are scattered all over the period table and are only important as each one does something different, but very useful, but are not that abundant.

What happened here? Everyone is talking about the rare earth metals deal, but no one seems to have bothered to check their facts as the difference between something like lithium and says lanthanum is basic chemistry. Ok, I realise none of us paid that much attention in chemistry lessons in school, but still, journalists are supposed to check these things and even I registered that lithium, the sister of the far more common sodium (one half of table salt) is not a rare earth metal without having to look it up.

What is driving this is US Sinophobia, as China controls 80-95% of global supplies. At the same as we become a silicone-based economy these elements are increasingly important as they are needed to build super-fast chips etc. The fact that China holds all cards in rare earth production is a huge national security problem for the US which has said it wants to stay “at least one, if not two” generations ahead of everyone else in the tech race.

According to a congressional report issued a few years ago, the level of US rare earth metal production is currently “none.” I think everyone is aware of this problem, even if they are not sure how to pronounce yttrium, let alone praseodymium, so the idea that Ukraine is stuffed full of this stuff is appealing.

The confusion seems to have stemmed from a report by the “Nato Energy Security Centre of Excellence” that claimed Ukraine is home to a plethora of “rare earth minerals” that are worth “trillions of dollars.” It listed a string of these metals and minerals as an example in the report, except none of the elements it named were actually rare earth metals.

It turns out that the organisation, despite bearing Nato’s name, is an autonomous body based in Lithuania, which is home to some of Ukraine’s most ardent supporters.

This report seems to have had a big impact. I don’t know if Senator Lindsey Graham (another avid Ukraine supporter) read it or not, but he was parroting the findings of the report to Fox News last year and selling the idea that Ukraine has “trillions of dollars-worth” of rare earth metals – he specifically called them “rare earth metals.” Trump was sold on the idea, and no one bothered to check.

Until now. Bloomberg Opinion columnist Javier Blas wrote a piece at the end of last week calling bullshit on this story, pointing out that Ukraine doesn’t have any REMs.

I spent the weekend digging into the details and while Ukraine doesn’t have any REMs it does have valuable strategic metals of which lithium and graphite are probably the most important, but titanium and copper are the most valuable. Taken all together, based on the sketchy estimates of the size of the reserves, bne IntelliNews estimates the value of all these minerals and metals is around $775bn, which is a lot, but far short of the $2-$7 trillion that Graham was selling.

However, the huge hole in Trump’s deal is that Ukraine has not developed these resources. It has the fourth largest copper deposits in Europe that on paper are worth $340bn, but it has zero copper mines or production. Likewise, its titanium reserves are worth around $420bn, but last year it exported titanium slurry (it doesn’t have the technology to produce the far more valuable titanium sponge used to make planes) that earned a pathetic $11.6mn.

Taken all together, we estimate that Ukraine earned less than $100mn from the export of all its strategically important minerals in 2024. Almost all of these minerals and metals are still in the ground and untouched. What Ukraine exports is also the basic ingredients like raw uranium, not the valuable refined “yellow cake” version Russia makes that can be burned in a nuclear power plant (NPP).

The upshot is that Trump’s $500bn mineral deal is a pipedream. The problem is not that the US demanding to take 50% of all the revenues. The problem is where are the billions of dollars needed to build, more or less from scratch, all the mines and processing plants to realise the value of these raw materials going to come from? And these plants are huge, very expensive and take years to construct.

It seems Trump has been sold a dud deal as instead of taking cash out of Ukraine – based on last year’s figures he’d be entitled to only $50mn – he would be putting it in and for years, before he saw a penny returned on his investment. Once he realises this, he will drop the mineral deal like a hot brick.