After the heated exchange between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelenskyy in the Oval Office in February, the prospect of a deal between the US and Ukraine was uncertain.

“Every week, it feels like we get a new position from Donald Trump,” Andrew Roth, the Guardian’s global affairs correspondent based in Washington DC, tells Michael Safi. “Sometimes we get multiple new positions from Donald Trump in a single morning. Nobody really believed that that was going to happen until the two names were on the dotted line.”

And yet, last week the countries agreed a momentous minerals deal, agreeing to split future profits of the minerals industry in Ukraine 50/50.

“We’re talking about natural gas, oil, possibly, but more importantly we’re talking about critical earth minerals. These include a couple of things, lithium, graphite, titanium. These are rare, important, critical minerals that are used in all kinds of industries around the world,” says Roth.

Does US economic interest in Ukraine bring the country closer to peace?

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