The Hill: Republicans Divided On Ukraine Minerals Agreement

• 28.02.2025, 12:11

Some politicians are calling for stronger guarantees for Kyiv.

The opinions of Republican senators in the United States of America (USA) are divided on the minerals agreement with Ukraine.

This has been reported by The Hill.

Some senators are hailing the merging deal as a big potential win and other Republicans calling for a stronger guarantee of Ukraine’s sovereignty. There are those, however, who are warning against any security guarantee by the United States. They fear it would risk embroiling the nation in a future war.

Senator Thom Tillis said a strong U.S. security guarantee would be “critical” to luring U.S. private investment to mineral and fossil fuel extraction within Ukraine’s borders.

“It’s going to be critical to our credibility about this being an enterprise that companies from the United States or Europe or wherever be allowed to participate in. They have to have those security guarantees,” he said.

Tillis cautioned that a “complicating factor” is that “a good portion of the minerals that we’re talking about are underneath the ground of where Russian soldiers are standing right now in the occupied area.”

Senator Rand Paul, in turn, is not for any kind of security deal with Ukraine, because he stands for “ending the war.”

“I think the president’s doing a good job pushing towards an end to the war. The sooner, the better. The sooner we can stop the carnage, the better.I’m not for promising that we’re going to protect the world, or promising that we’re going to defend Ukraine,” he said.

Meanwhile, Senator Chris Murphy panned the emerging deal as largely meaningless, arguing that it doesn’t require any real obligations from either the United States or Ukraine.