Trump wants $500B in mineral rights to help Ukraine. Give it to him

Vladimir Putin had a golden opportunity with President Donald Trump back in the White House, but for whatever reason (maybe he didn’t kiss Trump’s ass enough?) things have gone awry. That doesn’t mean that Ukraine is out of the woods, however, 

But it almost is. 

“I told [Ukraine] that I want the equivalent like $500B worth of rare earth,” Trump said in an interview with Fox News. “And they’ve essentially agreed to do that so at least we don’t feel stupid. Otherwise, we’re stupid. I said to them we have to—we have to get something. We can’t continue to pay this money.”

This is morally repugnant—like everything else coming out of Trump’s mouth—but it’s an easy “yes” for Ukraine. And that’s because, if Trump wants access to these minerals, he’ll have to give Ukraine the means to get their land back. 

Check out this map of Ukraine’s mineral reserves: 

Compare that to the current map of Russian-controlled territory:

As you can see, the areas richest in mineral deposits—the Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine (Luhansk and Donetsk oblasts) and Crimea—are held by Russia. That’s no accident. It is literally the reason Russia invaded those regions in 2014. And it’s also no coincidence that the 2022 invasion was aimed at taking the rest of Eastern Ukraine, which is also rich in mineral deposits—Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, and Sumi—while leaving a rump and relatively mineral-free Ukrainian state in the West. 

There is around $15 trillion of mineral wealth to exploit post war, and Ukraine will need it to rebuild and develop. Trump just needs to provide $500 billion in weapons, as well as permission to wage the war as Ukraine sees fit, without all of the hobbling restrictions with which the Biden administration saddled Ukraine. 

So send Ukraine all of the Bradley infantry fighting vehicles, Abrams tanks, F-16s, and Tomahawk cruise missiles. Plus, Trump is crazy enough that Putin really has to be careful with his usual nuclear bluster. It worked on the over-cautious Joe Biden, but Trump is immune to any logic or reason. 

Promise Trump a big statue in the middle of Kyiv and the rights to $500 billion in mineral wealth, and Ukraine will have itself an open weapons spigot. 

Then Ukraine can renege on all of that once it wins the war. After all, that’s the Trump way of doing business.

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