President Trump says rare earth deal with Ukraine is broken

According to RIA Novosti on February 20, in a speech at the Investment Summit in Miami on February 19 (Washington time) broadcast on the White House channel, US President Donald Trump said that Kiev had blocked an agreement with Washington on rare earth metals.

"We had a deal on rare earth metals, but they broke the deal two days ago," President Trump said.

The leader criticized that Washington has allocated 350 billion USD to support Ukraine, but this money will not bring any benefits to the US itself. Meanwhile, according to him, Europe is receiving compensation.

“Europe has allocated much less money for Ukraine’s needs, but their money is guaranteed, while the United States will not receive anything in return,” Mr. Trump said.

The US president also accused Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky of convincing the US to spend billions of dollars to drag the country “into a war that cannot be won and should never have started”.

Mr. Trump said that Mr. Zelensky did a bad job and that Ukraine was divided because of that.

“Mr. Zelensky did terrible things. His country was divided and millions and millions of people died in vain,” the White House leader said at the conference in Miami.

Calling Mr Zelensky “a mediocre comedian”, President Trump expressed hope that his main legacy would be achieving peace, speaking of his desire to end the conflict in Ukraine, see a ceasefire soon and restore stability in Europe within a year.

"We will stop this. World War III is not in anybody's interest, and we are not far from it. If we had maintained the same policy for one more year, World War III would have happened. But it will not be allowed to happen now," President Trump affirmed.

Additionally, speaking on Fox News, US National Security Advisor Mike Waltz said the US deserves a return on its investment in Ukraine and will not tolerate Kiev's dissatisfaction with the White House's economic initiatives.

"We see that aid from Europe often takes the form of loans that are repaid with interest in frozen Russian assets. We believe that American taxpayers also deserve to get back a significant portion of their investment," he said.

At the same time, adviser Waltz noted, the US administration was disappointed with the reaction of the Kiev authorities to the economic initiatives put forward by the United States. According to him, instead of considering these proposals, Kiev responded to Washington with an escalation of rhetoric and resistance.

"Our president has no intention of tolerating this," adviser Mike Waltz stressed.