President Trump wants the US to 'recover' money spent on Ukraine
US President Donald Trump said that Kiev should compensate Washington with rare earth minerals and oil.
President Donald Trump said Ukraine should reimburse the United States for all the aid Washington provided to Kiev during its conflict with Moscow. His comments added to public tensions between him and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky over aid and negotiations with Russia.
“Europe has contributed $100 billion. The United States has contributed $350 billion because we had an incompetent president and administration,” he told an audience at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Maryland on February 22.
“I want them to give us something in return for all the money we spent. So we are asking them to give us the rare earths and the oil, whatever we can get,” he added. “We will get our money back. We will get our money back because it is not fair. It is really not fair.”
Since February 2022, the US Congress has allocated $183 billion to Ukraine, including more than $66 billion in security aid, according to the US Department of Defense and the Ukraine Monitoring Group, an interagency body responsible for reporting to the US Congress.
Mr Trump has repeatedly insisted that Kiev and its European partners must be held accountable for all money spent and asserted that Ukraine’s President Zelensky “took advantage” of US money throughout the Biden administration.
Mr Zelensky, who recently said Ukraine would have “low chances” without US help, has refused to sign a deal that would allow US companies to own 50% of the country’s mineral resources. He later argued that any deal must include specific security guarantees for Kiev. For his part, Mr Trump told reporters at the White House that if the mineral deal were signed, it could bring in as much as $500 billion for the US.
Mr Trump has escalated his criticism of Mr Zelensky this week, calling him an “unelected dictator” and accusing him of squandering an opportunity to make peace with Russia. He insisted that Ukraine had no right to complain about being left out of US-Russian talks in Riyadh on February 18.
