Mr. Zelensky refused to recognize US aid as debt.
President Zelensky refuses to recognize US military aid as debt.
According to RIA Novosti, President Volodymyr Zelensky said on March 28 that Ukraine will not consider military aid provided by the US as a debt as implied in the draft new agreement with Washington on mineral resources.
“We are grateful for this assistance, but this is not a loan and we will not allow it to be talked about as such,” the Strana publication quotes President Zelensky as saying.
Earlier, the Ukrainian leader stated that Kiev refused to acknowledge its debt of $500 or $100 billion to the United States. According to him, Ukraine allegedly received assistance from the United States in the form of grants.
On March 28, the Ukrainian newspaper European Pravda reported that the new draft agreement between the US and Ukraine on mineral resources would require Kiev to return all the aid money provided by Washington. According to the publication, the text crosses almost all the previous "red lines" that Ukraine and the US agreed on, depriving Ukraine of some of its sovereignty, contradicting its future membership in the EU and also forcing Ukraine to repay all US aid from previous years. According to Ukrainian journalists, the decision to start paying could become a precedent, thanks to which all other donors to Kiev can demand the return of their investments.
According to data from the Kiel Institute for the World Economy, US aid to Ukraine since February 2022 has amounted to $123 billion.
Previously, during discussions on the previous version of the agreement, US President Donald Trump had asked Kiev to guarantee compensation of “400-500 billion dollars”.