Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky will soon sign a minerals agreement with the United States potentially worth hundreds of billions of dollars, White House national security adviser Mike Waltz said Friday. That move is part of U.S. President Donald Trump’s effort to end the war with Russia and a deal the American leader says will recoup billions in military aid provided to Kyiv.
“Here’s the bottom line: President Zelensky is going to sign that deal, and you will see that in the very short term,” Waltz said during remarks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), according to The Guardian.
During his evening address on Friday, Zelensky hinted that a deal could be close.
“Today, teams from Ukraine and the U.S. are working on a draft agreement between our governments,” he said. “This is an agreement that can strengthen our relations, and the key is to work out the details to ensure its effectiveness. I look forward to the outcome – a just result.”
An agreement could be signed as soon as Saturday, “although it is not yet complete, people briefed on the talks said,” The Wall Street Journal reported. The exact terms could not be learned. Asked if this would go through, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office Friday: “I think they want it. They feel good about it.”
U.S. and Ukrainian officials negotiated all night into Friday morning to ink an agreement and end the souring Zelensky-Trump relations, Axios reported, citing a U.S. official and a source with direct knowledge of the issue.
The pending deal would give the U.S. access to Ukraine’s deposits of critical minerals including aluminum, gallium and titanium, Waltz said. As we previously reported, Ukraine possesses materials that are essential components of microchips and electric vehicle batteries and have significant military value. Trump has been touting this as a way to reduce the burden for supporting Ukraine, with Waltz claiming U.S. aid to Kyiv has exceeded $175 billion, The Guardian reported.
That figure, as we have explained before, contradicts information compiled by the Kiel Institute For The World Economy’s Ukraine Support Tracker, which shows that the U.S. has provided Ukraine with a little less than $120 billion. More than half – $66.5 billion – was for direct security assistance in the form of donated weapons, according to Pentagon figures.
Last week, the treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, presented Zelensky with the draft proposal for that plan, with Ukraine providing approximately $500 billion worth of rare earth elements to the U.S., The Guardian explained.
There were claims that Bessent told the Ukrainian president to sign the deal on the spot, but we can’t confirm that.
News about the looming mineral deal came as the war of words between Trump and Zelensky continues to escalate in the wake of peace talks in Saudi Arabia between the U.S. and Moscow that did not include Ukraine.
In comments to Fox News radio host Brian Kilmeade on Friday, Trump blasted Zelensky as a poor negotiator, and called Bessent’s trip “dangerous” and “a waste of time.”
The pair “couldn’t even come close” to a deal, Trump told Kilmeade. Ukrainian officials, however, said that they had only a few hours to study it before it was presented to them.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he was “very upset” with Zelensky over the deal, claiming the Ukrainian leader misrepresented the outcome of a meeting he had with Rubio and Vice President J.D. Vance.
Zelensky said he wanted to make the deal but needed the approval of his legislature, Rubio said.
However, “I read two days later that Zelensky is out there saying ‘I rejected the deal. I told him, No way that we’re not doing that.’ Well, that’s not what happened in that meeting,” Rubio explained. “So you start to get upset by something. We’re trying to help these guys.”
As we previously noted, it’s one thing to strike a deal, but something else entirely to extract and process the resources.
A little more than half of Ukraine’s mineral resources are contained in the four regions Russian President Vladimir Putin annexed in September 2022, and of which his army occupies a considerable swathe, The Independent reported earlier this month. That includes Luhansk, Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson, though Kherson holds little value in terms of minerals, the publication added. The Crimean peninsula, annexed and occupied by Russian forces in 2014, also holds billions in mineral wealth, The Independent added.
Regardless of the difficulty though, it seems that both sides see value in a mineral deal. Signing it could go a long way to cooling the tensions between Trump and Zelensky that have erupted over the past week.
The Latest
On the battlefield, the bulk of the fighting continues to rage in eastern Ukraine’s Donetsk region, but despite strong Russian pressure, its forces are making few advances. Here are the key takeaways from the latest Institute for the Study of War (ISW) assessment.
- Kursk: Russian forces continued offensive operations in Kursk Oblast on Feb. 20 but did not make any confirmed advances.
- Kherson: Russian forces continued ground attacks in the Kharkiv direction on Feb. 20 but did not advance.
- Luhansk: Russian forces continued offensive operations in the Borova, Kupyansk, and Lyman direction on Feb. 20 but did not advance.
- Donetsk: Russian forces recently advanced near Velyka Novosilka. They continued offensive operations in the Chasiv Yar, Kurakhove Siversk, and Toretsk directions on Feb. 20 but did not advance. Both sides, meanwhile, recently advanced in the Pokrovsk direction.
- Zaphorizhzhia: Russian forces continued offensive operations in western Zaporizhia Oblast on Feb. 20 but did not make any confirmed advances.
- Kherson: Neither Ukrainian nor Russian sources reported ground activity in the Kherson direction on Feb. 20.
Representatives from the U.S. and Russia have been quietly meeting in Switzerland in recent months for informal discussions regarding the future of the war in Ukraine, Reuters reported on Friday. That news comes as Zelensky has fumed over being cut out of a recent negotiation session between Washington and Moscow.
The informal meetings were described as “track two meetings,” a type of unofficial diplomacy meant to lower tension, Reuters reported, citing three unnamed sources.
Trump continued to blast Zelensky over the latter’s concerns about being left out of peace negotiations.
“…he complains that he’s not in a meeting that we’re having with Saudi Arabia trying to intervene in peace,” Trump told Fox News host Brian Kilmeade. “Well, he’s been at meetings for three years with …a president who didn’t know what the hell he was doing. He’s been at meetings for three years, and nothing got done. So I don’t think it’s very important to be at meetings, to be honest with you, he’s been there for three years. He makes it very hard to make deals.”
Kilmeade repeatedly interrupted, trying to get the president to acknowledge that the war was started by Russia.
“But you know who is to blame for that,” Kilmeade interjected. Russian President “…Vladimir Putin that did the invasion, unwarranted, to try to take back land he had no right to…”
Trump also asserted that Russia has the upper hand in any peace negotiations because of all the land it has captured in Ukraine, the BBC reported.
“I think the Russians want to see the war end, I really do. I think they have the cards a little bit, because they’ve taken a lot of territory. They have the cards,” Trump told the BBC on Air Force One.
When asked if he trusts that Russia wants peace, Trump said “I do.”
Russia used the first round of the recently concluded negotiations with the U.S. over ending the war in Ukraine to demand the withdrawal of NATO forces from the alliance’s eastern flank, the Financial Times reported. That triggered concern in European capitals that the Trump administration “could acquiesce to seal a peace deal,” the publication suggested.
The Romanian president’s chief of staff and adviser for defense and national security said while the U.S. delegation had rejected Moscow’s demand, there were no guarantees that Washington would not eventually make this concession to Putin.
“‘As far as I understand, the situation can change from hour to hour or from day to day,’ Cristian Diaconescu told Antena3 television,” FT noted. Diaconescu was referring to Trump’s scathing criticism of Zelensky as well as the American leader’s “concessions made to Russia even before talks began,” according to FT.
Diaconescu “stressed that the Russian delegation to the talks in Riyadh earlier this week ‘failed to convince the Americans’ on a NATO withdrawal and that further visits by the leaders of the UK and France to Washington next week would seek to persuade Trump not to give in to this demand,” FT wrote.
There is a growing list of U.S. legislators objecting to Trump’s harsh comments about Zelensky, including calling the Ukrainian leader a “dictator.”
Several Republican senators broke ranks with the president about that assessment, including Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, Susan Collins of Maine, and John Thune of South Dakota.
“I would certainly never refer to President Zelensky as a dictator,” Murkowski told reporters. “It is quite clear who started the war. It was absolutely Russia at Putin’s directive.”
Sen. Thom Tillis (R-NC), another staunch Trump supporter, also questioned Trump’s support for Putin.
“I believe his instincts are pretty good,” Tillis said of Trump. “But what I’m telling you, whoever believes that there is any space for Vladimir Putin in the future of a stable globe, better go to Ukraine. They better go to Europe. They better invest the time to understand that this man is a cancer, and the greatest threat to democracy in my lifetime.”
Democratic Senator Mark Kelly of Arizona took a similar stance.
“To call one of our allies ‘a dictator’ while they’re defending their country against an actual dictator is ridiculous,” Kelly Xed. “I’ve met with President Zelensky multiple times and understand how hard the people of Ukraine are fighting to defend their homeland. I’ll continue to stand with them against Putin even if Trump won’t.”
Russia is preparing to announce a supposed “victory” in the war against Ukraine by the “round date” of Feb. 24, the third anniversary of the start of the full-scale war, Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR) claimed on Friday. “Moreover, the aforementioned plans may also include talk of ‘Russia’s victory over NATO,’ since Moscow’s propaganda has long described the war against Ukraine as a war with the Alliance.”
ISW produced a fact sheet it claimed counters several statements Trump has made about the war, U.S. support for it, and the ensuing negotiation process.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer is reportedly expected to provide details about a potential Anglo-French peacekeeping force in Ukraine when he meets with Trump in Washington next week, according to The Telegraph.
The plan calls for fewer than 30,000 troops “deployed to Ukrainian cities, ports and other critical infrastructure sites, such as nuclear power stations, far away from the current front lines,” the publication reported.
Starmer will reportedly urge Trump “to have U.S. fighter jets and missiles on standby in Eastern Europe to respond with lethal force if Russia breaks the terms of any armistice,” The Telegraph noted, citing “Western officials briefed on the plans.”
“Rather than stationing a much bigger force in the war-torn country, the mission will rely on ‘technical monitoring,’ including intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance aircraft, drones and satellites to provide a ‘complete picture of what is going on,’” The Telegraph stated, citing a Western official. “The operation would be backed up by enough firepower to ‘monitor and shoot those attacks down,’” to reopen Ukraine’s airspace and enable commercial flights, the source added.
Naval patrol vessels would also be sent to the Black Sea to monitor Russian threats to commercial shipping routes.
French President Emmanuel Macron floated the idea of increasing his nation’s military spending from 2.1% to 5% of the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), according to the French France TV Info news outlet. The move comes out of concern that the U.S. will “no longer protect Europe via NATO,” the publication noted.
“We are entering a time when we will have to […] reinvest even more, French and European, to strengthen our defense and our security,” Macron said, adding that he did not know “if 5% is the right figure for France, but in any case, we will have to go up.”
EU countries are preparing a military aid package worth at least €6 billion ($6.3 billion) for Ukraine, Politico reported, citing three EU diplomats. That aid was being gathered “to shore up Kyiv’s strategic position at the outset of U.S.-led talks with Russia,” the news outlet explained.
The package, which should include everything from 1.5 million artillery shells to air defense systems, “would mark one of the EU’s largest military aid packages since Russia’s full-scale invasion in 2022 and could be unveiled ahead of a highly symbolic visit by European commissioners to Kyiv on Feb. 24,” Politico noted.
Two of the diplomats said the package could be “increased to up to €10 billion ($10.5 billion) or more as countries dig into their inventories to see what they can send to Ukraine,” Politico posited. EU foreign ministers are expected to examine the package on Monday, during a regular gathering in Brussels next week.
ISW noted in a recent X thread that “Russia will likely face several materiel, manpower, and economic constraints in the coming months that will put pressure on the Kremlin’s ability to maintain its war effort in Ukraine in the medium- to long-term — if Russian forces’ loss rates in Ukraine continue at the current tempo.”
In addition, despite Putin’s efforts to paint the Russian economy as robust, inflation in that country has been rising due to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine.
“Russia primarily recruits volunteer soldiers through large individual payments and has had to increase payments significantly to sustain recruitment. Russian lenders show signs of uncertainty about Russia’s economic future and the solvency of Kremlin coffers,” ISW stated. “Putin’s protracted war in Ukraine is destroying Russia’s national wealth through the steady erosion of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and growing inflation. The Kremlin has been trying in recent months to reduce state spending on benefits to military personnel, indicating that the Kremlin is aware that it cannot continue such high spending and must find ways to cut costs.”
These factors are contributing to Russia’s current force generation apparatus appearing to be “unable to recruit the manpower that the Russian military needs to sustain Russia’s current rate of offensive operations.” ISW stated.
To convince the Russian populous not to worry, the Kremlin “has been engaged in an information campaign in recent months that aims to posture the Russian economy as strong and stable to both domestic and international audiences, and the state of Russia’s economy is likely more strained than Kremlin officials publicly acknowledge,” ISW suggested.
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk “has called on the European Union to confiscate the assets of the Russian Central Bank, which are frozen due to sanctions, to finance future financial support for Ukraine,” Euronews reported.
“So far, the bloc has only used the extraordinary revenues of the assets held in its territory, estimated to be worth €210 billion (about $220 billion), to deliver financial and military assistance to the war-torn nation,” the publication reported. “The option of asset confiscation remains a slippery slope, however, because the money is considered Russia’s sovereign property and is therefore protected by international law.”
“Enough talking, it’s time to act,” Donald Tusk posted on X on Thursday. “Let’s finance our aid for Ukraine from the Russian frozen assets.”
Financial Times has produced a documentary claiming to show that Russia has a policy of executing Ukrainians who have surrendered.
The film “investigates the rise in cases of Russian soldiers executing Ukrainian POWs and reveals the likely identity of the Russian behind killings,” FT reporter Christopher Miller noted.
The onslaught of Russian missiles and drones against Ukraine has been so fierce that the nation has run out of interceptors, Zelensky said in an appeal for more.
“We have nothing to shoot down missiles with,” the Ukrainian leader recently complained. “The commander calls me at 5 a.m. and says: ‘There are 8 targets approaching, but we have no missiles for the Patriot air defense system.’”
Ukraine has received several Patriot batteries and a large number of missiles from the U.S. and allied nations, including the recent donation of about 90 interceptors provided by America from Israeli stocks.
It is no surprise that drones are playing a key role for Ukraine in its defense against Russia. A new study by RUSI shows just how effective they’ve been, causing the majority of damage to Russian equipment of any weapon in Ukraine’s arsenal. That’s despite challenges presented by electronic warfare (EW), weather and interference caused by multiple drones operating in the same area.
“Tactical UAVs have significant limitations,” the report states. “Between 60% and 80% of Ukrainian [first-person view] FPVs fail to reach their target, depending on the part of the front and the skill of the operators. Of those that do strike their targets, a majority fail to destroy the target system when striking armored vehicles.”
The success rate in wounding infantry is high, the report notes.
“Furthermore, there are long periods where either EW or the weather significantly degrades UAV operations. With FPVs that are remotely piloted by radio frequency, it is also difficult to concentrate multiple drones in time and space because they can interfere with one another’s guidance systems,” the report continues.
“Despite these limitations, tactical UAVs currently account for 60%–70% of damaged and destroyed Russian systems,” RUSI found.
To help defend against Ukrainian drone attacks, some Russian troops are kitted out with backpack-style electronic warfare countermeasures bristling with antennae and hooked into a portable power supply. They are also toting over-and-under shotguns, and carry a bandolier full of shells.
One Russian anti-drone system seems to have had a short shelf life in its ability to protect troops and equipment.
Earlier this month, we told you about a mile-long mesh net “tunnel” Russian forces were using to protect convoys against onslaughts of Ukrainian’s first-person view drones. Ukrainians, however, found a quick workaround. Just destroy the netting.
“This may involve using drones equipped with flammable thermal mixtures or deploying other types of drones to destroy the net — such as heavy bombers — before engaging with classic FPV drones,” Michael, the commander of Ukraine’s Typhoon drone unit, recently told Forbes.
Russia has modified its Shahed-136 drones to give them more explosive power, GUR stated.
“The upgraded Shahed-136 now carries a 90-kilogram warhead, nearly double the explosive capacity of the previous 50-kilogram version,” GUR explained, according to the Kyiv Independent.
Though significantly enhancing the Shahed’s destructive power, the heavier payload has reduced its range from 1,350 kilometers (839 miles) to about 650 kilometers (404 miles), limiting its reach but making it deadlier in closer-range attacks.
U.K.’s Defense Ministry offered a detailed view in the following video of the containerized Gravehawk surface-to-air missile system, which uses repurposed Soviet-era heat-seeking R-73 air-to-air missiles as interceptors. Co-developed by the U.K. and Denmark for Ukraine, Gravehawk is the latest in a series of what have become commonly referred to as ‘FrankenSAMs,’ which leverage existing capabilities within the Ukrainian armed forces’ arsenal to help rapidly provide badly needed additional air defenses. You can read more about that system in our detailed story here.
In the early days of this all-out war, the U.S.-provided FGM-142 Javelin anti-tank guided missile systems became such a powerful weapon for Ukraine that there was even a Saint Javelin meme created. However, as the war progressed, drones became a greater danger and both sides added extra armor and often massive so-called cope cages to protect against them.
But as the following video shows, the Javelins remain a menace, one that this Russian tank’s huge cage couldn’t defeat.
The agreement between Moscow and Pyongyang sending North Korean troops to battle Ukraine in Russia’s Kursk region is a boon to both sides, according to GUR’s commander.
North Korean troops deployed to Russia are adapting quickly, gaining firsthand experience in modern warfare with Russian military support — an alarming development that could reshape security dynamics in East Asia, Lt. Gen. Kyrylo Budanov told the Chosun Daily.
“This war has mobilized the full military capabilities of the nations involved. Only three countries — Ukraine, Russia, and North Korea — are gaining direct experience in full-scale 21st-century warfare. The North Korean military of the future will be fundamentally different from its past,” Budanov explained. He cited the KN-23 missile that North Korea supplied to Russia as an example.
“Initially, its accuracy was severely flawed, with an error margin of 500 to 1,500 meters,” he said. “But Russian missile experts made technical modifications, resolving the issue. The missile is now significantly more precise and a far greater threat.”
He warned that this technological advancement could have serious security implications for South Korea and Japan, both of which are within North Korea’s missile range.
“North Korea is using this war to gain combat experience and modernize its military technology,” Budanov said. “This will have lasting consequences for the security landscape in the Asia-Pacific region.”
Ukrainian artillery units have begun combat duty in the northern part of the country after undergoing intensive training. They are armed with the domestically-produced 2S22 Bohdana self-propelled howitzer. Ukrainian officials claim they are producing up to 20 of these a month.
The Ukrainian Navy released an amazing video of its air defense taking down Russian Shahed drones attacking Odesa overnight. The navy claimed 16 kills, many of which you can see below.
Faced with numerous incursions of Russian drones targeting Ukrainian ports across the Danube River, Romania took a step toward granting its military authority to down these weapons.
A new legislative initiative “establishes that Russian drones that enter Romanian territory without authorization can be shot down, something that was not possible before because our country is not at war,” according to the Romanian Digi24 media outlet. “The Senate is to give the decisive vote, and then the law must be promulgated by interim president Ilie Bolojan in order for the legislative amendments to be applied.”
Russia has launched a full-scale railway service connecting Rostov-on-Don to occupied Mariupol, Volnovakha, and Donetsk, Mariupol’s City Council reported on Feb. 20.
“Russian occupiers have built this railway branch to shorten the route for delivering military equipment from Rostov-on-Don to Mariupol and Volnovakha. The next step is extending the line to Crimea,” stated the Center for Occupation Studies, according to the Ukrainian United24 media outlet.
That’s it for now.
Contact the author: howard@thewarzone.com