Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that officials from his country and the US were working on concluding an economic deal to ensure that the accord worked and was fair to Kyiv.
\nIn Washington, US President Donald Trump said negotiators were close to clinching an accord.
\nZelensky rejected an initial proposal focusing on cooperation around metals, saying it was \u201cnot a serious conversation\u201d and not in Ukraine\u2019s interests.
\n\u201cToday, the teams of Ukraine and the United States are working on a draft agreement between our governments,\u201d Zelensky said in his nightly video address.
\n\u201cThis agreement has the potential to strengthen our relations and, most importantly, the details must be arranged in such a way that ensures it works. I am hoping for a result, a fair result.\u201d
\nZelensky\u2019s comments followed a conversation between his chief of staff, Andrii Yermak, and US National Security Adviser Mike Waltz. The Ukrainian president\u2019s office said the two men discussed \u201caligning positions\u201d in bilateral relations.
\nYermak \u201cstressed the importance of maintaining bilateral cooperation and a high level of relations between Ukraine and the United States,\u201d according to the president\u2019s office.
\nWaltz said on Friday he expected Zelensky to sign the minerals agreement with the US as part of efforts to end the Ukraine war.
\n\u201cHere\u2019s the bottom line, President Zelensky is going to sign that deal, and you will see that in the very short term,\u201d Waltz told the Conservative Political Action Conference on the outskirts of Washington.
\nZelensky rejected US demands for $500 billion in mineral wealth from Ukraine to repay Washington for wartime aid, saying the US had supplied nowhere near that sum.
\nHe also said the proposed deal offered none of the security guarantees that Ukraine is seeking as part of a peace settlement.
\nZelensky became involved in barbed exchanges with Trump this week over approaches to a peace settlement and the opening of US-Russian talks to which Ukraine was not invited.
\nTrump branded the Ukrainian leader \u201ca dictator without elections,\u201d a reference to Zelensky remaining in office beyond his mandate without calling a wartime election.
\nIn his address, Zelensky provided details of telephone calls he made to European and African leaders \u2014 including Croatia, the Czech Republic, Germany, Slovenia, Ireland, Luxembourg and Sweden.
\n\u201cThe main conclusion is that Europe must and can do considerably more so that peace can realistically be achieved,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Ukraine\u2019s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Friday that officials from his country and the US were working on concluding an economic deal to ensure that the accord worked and was fair to Kyiv. In Washington, US President Donald Trump said negotiators were close to clinching an accord. Zelensky rejected an initial proposal focusing on cooperation …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":77460,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-77440","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77440"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77440\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":77461,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77440\/revisions\/77461"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/77460"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}