Ukraine Minerals ‘European Agreement’ Russia Seizes $300 Billion ‘European Confiscation’

Ukraine Minerals ‘European Agreement’ Russia Seizes $300 Billion ‘European Confiscation’

A European-led solution has been proposed in which Europe signs a ‘mineral agreement’ for Ukraine, which the Trump administration has suspended arms support for, and Europe ‘confiscates’ Russian assets seized after the Russian invasion and uses them to fund military build-up.

Trump’s (Republican) White House’s provocation last week on the 28th seems to be the cancellation of the Ukraine reconstruction project signed under the Biden (Democratic) administration in June of last year, which involved the privatization of about 30 state-owned assets and the injection of $50 billion in interest income from $281 billion in Russian assets seized by the G7.

France has been leading talks on Ukraine’s minerals since October 2024, the French Defense Minister said on February 27, and the next day, negotiations with the United States were suspended due to a clash between Trump and Zelensky at the White House. On February 27, Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu appeared on French broadcaster '8h30 franceinfo' and officially announced that <France has been discussing with Ukraine 'since October' the development of Ukrainian minerals for the 'defense industry'>.

The Kiev Independent reported that <French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu has been discussing the use of Ukrainian minerals for the French defense industry since October 2024> and <French Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu's remarks came as the United States and Kiev reached an initial agreement on a deal to use Ukraine's natural resources, including rare earth minerals, oil, and gas, and President Zelensky visited Washington on February 28 to discuss the conclusion of the negotiations and security guarantees>. Former Ukrainian Foreign Minister Dmytro Kuleba said on the 3rd that “Europe can take the cards out of President Trump’s hand with two moves: offering an alternative deal for Ukrainian minerals and seizing frozen Russian assets to finance arms production and purchases,” according to the New York Times.

He, who was Ukrainian Foreign Minister from 2020 to 2024, said that “while the European Union (EU), Britain, and Norway cannot completely replace the United States as Ukraine’s supporters, these pragmatic measures would immediately enhance Europe’s role and give Ukraine the breathing space it needs.” He added that “when Bolshevik Russia signed a treaty with Germany in 1918, recognizing Ukraine’s independence and promising to withdraw its troops and stop Russian propaganda on Ukrainian territory, Ukraine signed an agreement with Germany to exchange vast natural resources (mainly grain and meat), and in return, the Germans provided ground troops to Ukraine to protect its independence.” At that time, the ‘Ukraine Agreement’ between Russia and Germany fell through in less than a year, Germany withdrew, and with the Russian Red Army entering, the Ukrainian nation ceased to exist and was incorporated into the Soviet Union.

Former Minister Kuleba said, “From then until the Russian invasion in 2022, 104 years later, Europe finally recognized that Ukraine belongs to Europe by putting Ukraine on the track of the EU accession process,” and presented ‘change’ in Europe as a solution, saying, “Moscow will never change, but Europe can still change.”
Former Minister Kuleba’s new proposal mainly presented a confrontational structure with the United States through Europe-led exercise of rights regarding the frozen assets of the Russian Central Bank, which are currently pending in European banks, amounting to $281 billion (390 trillion won).

On June 13th last year, at the Rome G7 Summit, Democratic President Biden received the G7 countries’ consent to a plan to provide Ukraine with a $50 billion (70 trillion won) loan using the interest on the $281 billion of frozen assets of the Russian Central Bank as collateral, and the US applied the method of leading the seizure of Russian assets.
The Democratic Party’s ‘freezing of $281 billion of Russian assets’ was a strategy to use the interest to seize ‘Ukraine reconstruction funds’, and this time, the former Ukrainian foreign minister seemed to have proposed ‘direct negotiations with Russia and Europe’ through the ‘European seizure of all assets’ strategy by ‘excluding Trump’.

In early September 2022, Ukrainian President Zelensky signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Larry Fink, chairman of the American private equity fund BlackRock, stating, “BlackRock will work closely with the Ukrainian government to develop a consulting support framework for attracting private capital to support and restore the Ukrainian economy.” At the Tatarang Group’s ‘Rebuilding Ukraine’ investment announcement event in Singapore at the time, President Zelensky said of the Blackrock investment, “Andrew Forrest and I agreed not to replace the rubbish Russian infrastructure of the communist era, but instead to leapfrog it with the latest technology. We will take advantage of the fact that what the Russians destroyed can easily be replaced with the latest and most modern green and digital infrastructure.” “This innovative initiative will catalyze the world’s first green digital economy and the world’s fastest-growing economy.” President Zelensky formalized the reconstruction program to ‘replace Russian infrastructure with digital infrastructure’ with Australia’s largest private support fund, which has committed $10 billion to conclude a minimum of $2.5 billion in the Ukraine Green Growth Initiative. The largest ‘Ukraine reconstruction project’ in Europe since World War II was maximized to a scale of up to $100 billion by American private equity funds, who had the greatest vested interests, and President Zelensky likened the reconstruction of Ukraine to the Marshall Plan, a US-backed reconstruction program that provided aid to Western Europe immediately after World War II. This huge economic opportunity became the largest capital feast, with the initial cost estimate for rebuilding physical infrastructure alone exceeding at least $75 billion.
Zelensky applied the strategy of ‘completely replacing the entire infrastructure of partially destroyed Ukraine with a digital system’ through American private equity funds, monopolizing the power of US support and extending his presidential term without an election.
The Yoon Seok-yeol administration focused on ‘subcontracting reconstruction projects’ in Ukraine through the US Blackrock, and Blackrock was given an advisory position to the Ministry of Strategy and Finance.
The next German chancellor, Meritz CDU’s Chung Jae, once served as Blackrock’s European CEO and is an asset management expert. The former Ukrainian foreign minister told the Times that Friday’s events were “the formalization of a new reality that has been clear for weeks,” as the White House broadcast the implosion to the world. “The United States can still try to lead the world, but it’s a different world, and if there was any silver lining to the scene where President Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance chastised President Zelensky in the Oval Office, it was the shockwaves it sent across Europe.” He went on to point out that “European leaders who heard Prime Minister Vance’s admonition in Munich in February already knew that they couldn’t just wait around like they did during President Trump’s first term,” and that “anyone who still doubted that will be reassured by Friday’s performance,” confirming the divisions between Europe and the United States. He diagnosed it as ‘pressure between Trump and Russia to cooperate on minerals negotiations over a fake peace’, especially since <Last Friday, after a gloomy-looking President Zelensky left the White House, President Trump wrote on social media that the Ukrainian leader “can come back when he is ready for peace”> and <On the very day that President Trump spoke of the importance of peace and sent President Zelensky home to think about peace, Russia launched more than 150 attack drones into Ukrainian cities. President Trump emphasized that he was making great progress toward peace with Russian President Vladimir Putin, but Putin has only increased airstrikes since taking office>. 

Dmytro Kuleba is a senior fellow at the Harvard Belfer Center, who served as Ukraine’s Foreign Minister from 2020 to 2024, and currently lives in Kiev and wrote this article.

See <Ukraine Reconstruction, Privatization of 30 State-owned Enterprises, Russia Seizes $280 Billion, Invests $500 Billion in Interest>
<Ukraine Reconstruction, $100 Billion ‘Replaced with Digital Infrastructure’, February 17, 2023>

<Zelensky Rare Earths ‘Split’ Map Bait Strategy Trump LNG ‘European Supply Base’ Provided, February 28, 2025>