The US has demanded control of a crucial pipeline in Ukraine used to send Russian gas to Europe, according to reports, in a move described as a colonial shakedown.
US and Ukrainian officials met on Friday to discuss White House proposals for a minerals deal. Donald Trump wants Kyiv to hand over its natural resources as “payback” in return for weapons delivered by the previous Biden administration.
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Talks have become increasingly acrimonious, Reuters said. The latest US draft is more “maximalist” than the original version from February, which proposed giving Washington $500bn (€440bn) worth of rare metals, as well as oil and gas.
Citing a source close to the talks, the news agency said the most recent document includes a demand that the US government’s International Development Finance Corporation take control of the natural gas pipeline.
It runs from the town of Sudzha in western Russia to the Ukrainian city of Uzhhorod, about 1,200km away, on the border with the European Union and Slovakia. Built in Soviet times, the pipeline is a key piece of national infrastructure and a major energy route.
On 1 January, Ukraine cut off the supply of gas when its five-year contract with the Russian state energy company Gazprom expired. Both countries had previously earned hundreds of millions of euros in transit fees, including during the first three years of full-scale war.
Volodymyr Landa, a senior economist with the Centre for Economic Strategy, a Kyiv thinktank, said the Americans were out for “all they can get”. Their bullying “colonial-type” demands had little chance of being accepted by Kyiv, he said.
Last autumn, Volodymyr Zelenskiy proposed giving the US access to Ukraine’s underdeveloped mineral sector. He envisaged a deal that would see the incoming Trump administration supply Ukraine with weapons, in return for future profits from joint investments.
Instead, Trump has refused to give security commitments or military support but wants the minerals anyway. Last week he complained Zelenskiy was trying to “back out of an agreement” and said Ukraine’s president would have “big problems” if he failed to sign.
Speaking to journalists on Thursday, Zelenskiy said he was ready to do a deal to modernise his country but that Ukraine could only agree if there was “parity” between the two sides, with revenues split “50-50”.
“I am just defending what belongs to Ukraine. It should be beneficial for both the United States and Ukraine. This is the right thing to do,” Zelenskiy said. The US Treasury confirmed “technical” talks were continuing.
On Sunday the Kremlin said relations with the United States were moving ahead very well, but it also cautioned that the damage done to ties with Moscow under the previous US administration was grave.
“Everything is going very well,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Russian state television reporter Pavel Zarubin. “The fact is that reanimating relations from scratch is a very difficult task, requiring very intense diplomatic and other efforts.”
Russia’s Defence Ministry said on Sunday its forces had captured the village of Yelyzavetivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region.
Earlier the acting mayor of the northern Ukrainian city of Sumy said there were more than 20 dead after a Russian missile strike. Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 55 drones targeting Ukraine overnight.
On social media on Sunday, Moscow said Russia’s air defence units destroyed 12 Ukrainian drones over the Rostov region and one over the region of Belgorod.
Ukraine carried out two attacks on Russian energy infrastructure over the past day, Interfax news agency cited Russia’s Defence Ministry as saying on Sunday.
Meanwhile, the US special envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, said his remarks over a possible partition of Ukraine had been misinterpreted. In an interview with London’s Times newllogg said the country could be divided “almost like the Berlin after world war two” as part of a peace deal.
Writing on X, Kellogg said he was referring to “a post-cease fire resiliency force in support of Ukraine’s sovereignty”. Under this plan, Russian troops would remain in territory already seized by Moscow, with British and French forces stationed in Kyiv and in other parts of the country.
On Friday, Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff held talks with Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg. Witkoff’s reported solution to the conflict was to give Russia the four Ukrainian provinces it is demanding – including territory that Ukraine controls, and which is home to one million people.
Meanwhile, at a meeting of the Ukraine defence contact group on Friday, Kyiv’s allies announced a record €21bn in additional military help. They accused Putin of dragging his feet over a 30-day ceasefire deal which Ukraine has accepted.
Early on Saturday, Russia carried out further air attacks against Ukrainian civilian targets. Three warehouses were destroyed in Kyiv, with two people injured. The Kremlin has fired 70 missiles and 2,200 drones at Ukraine since the 11 March US ceasefire proposal, Ukrainian officials said.
Zelenskiy paid tribute on Saturday to a 26-year-old pilot, captain Pavlo Ivanov, who was killed during an F-16 combat mission. Ukraine’s small air force “heroically” defends the country from Russian missiles and drones, and supported ground operations, he said. - The Guardian
Additional reporting by Reuters
