Worthy Christian News > World News > Ukraine’s President Ready For Minerals Deal With US Despite Disastrous Talks (Worthy News Focus)

Ukraine’s President Ready For Minerals Deal With US Despite Disastrous Talks (Worthy News Focus)

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

KYIV/BUDAPEST/LONDON (Worthy News) – Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Sunday he still hopes for “constructive” talks with the United States after his made-for-tv verbal clash with U.S. President Donald J. Trump and signaled his readiness to sign a $500 billion minerals deal with Washington.

Yet speaking at a summit in London, Zelenskyy warned he would “not accept giving any occupied territory away to Russia” and urged the West to remember that “Russia is the aggressor” as it invaded Ukraine in February 2022.

While Trump was unlikely to welcome these words, Zelenskyy said he is ready to “move the conversation forward” after Friday’s fiasco, adding that his difficult meeting with Trump was “best left to history.”

It was unclear, however, how his refusal to give up territories could be reconciled with Trump’s demands that Kyiv make far-ranging compromises ranging from giving up territories to not joining NATO.

The Ukrainian leader stressed that his nation needed “strong security guarantees” from the U.S. and Europe, or otherwise Ukraine “would face the risk of Russia seeking to restart hostilities with false claims about Ukrainian violations, as it did in the past.”

Zelenskyy said he hoped that a British-French initiative for peace would bear fruit “in coming weeks,” with “several nations” declaring their interest in providing security guarantees for Kyiv.

His comments come after French president Emmanuel Macron floated the idea of a one-month limited ceasefire that would apply to air, sea, and attacks on critical energy infrastructure.

ZELENSKYY KNOWS PLAN

Zelenskyy didn’t suggest whether he would accept the proposal but said he was “aware of everything.”

Summit host British Prime Minister Keir Starmer made it a point to embrace Zelenskyy and walk him down the street to his Downing Street residence.

The doors were opened there, just a day after they were closed at the White House, where Trump decided Zelenskyy had been “disrespectful.”

As he concluded a London summit with European, Turkish, and Canadian leaders on Sunday, Starmer also announced a new $2 billion export finance contract for Ukraine, allowing it “to buy more than 5,000 air defense missiles” to help its defense against Russia.

Starmer also confirmed plans to form “a coalition of the willing” to enforce a potential peace deal in Ukraine, which he said Britain was prepared “to back with boots on the ground and planes in the air.”

That was music to the ears of NATO Secretary Alliance Mark Rutte, who said the Western military alliance would continue as several member states plan to increase defense spending, as Trump had demanded.

He urged the media to “stop gossiping about what the U.S. might or might not do” but insisted the country “remains committed to NATO.”

POLISH PM

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said he hopes the upcoming European Union summit on Thursday will “send a very clear impulse showing Putin and Russia that no one here, in the West, intends to surrender to his blackmail and aggression.”

However, Hungary and Slovakia have already said they would disagree on a new round of military support to Ukraine. Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán said the focus should be on peace talks.

Yet Canada’s Justin Trudeau offered a passionate defense of Zelenskyy, saying that in his comments in the Oval Office on Friday, “he pointed out in so many words that Vladimir Putin is a liar and a criminal and cannot be trusted to keep his word in any way.”

As talks were underway, the Ukraine-Russia war continued, with an oil refinery in the Russian city of Ufa seen on fire. However, authorities claimed there was “no threat” to the local population.

It was not immediately clear what caused the fire, but Ukraine’s Kyiv Post newspaper suggested it was a Ukrainian drone strike, writing on social media platform X: “Russian air defense has failed. Again.”

It was not possible to verify either report independently. Ufa is in the Republic of Bashkortostan, hundreds of miles (kilometers) from the border with Ukraine.

It suggested that Ukrainian troops still occupy parts of Russia. However, in Ukraine, Russia’s military attacked several areas, including the southeastern city of Kryvyi Rih Evelyn, Zelenskyy’s birthplace, a witness told Worthy News.

HEARING MASSIVE BLASTS

Evelyn, a 23-year-old pharmacist in Kryvyi Rih, told Worthy News that she saw a massive fire after massive explosions. “And now I’m in shock… I found out that this is the place where I walk my dog… right next to me,” she said.

Elsewhere, an apartment building late on Sunday in Ukraine’s second-largest city, Kharkiv, triggered a fire and injured eight people, the city’s mayor said.

Kharkiv resisted capture in the early days of Russia’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine and has since been a frequent target of air attacks. A medical center was damaged in one of several drone strikes in the city on Friday.

Mayor Ihor Terekhov, writing on the Telegram messaging platform, said the fire triggered by Sunday’s attack spread to several apartments on the top floor of the building. None of the injured had required hospital treatment, he said.

The mayor added that three other residential buildings were damaged, with well over 100 windows smashed. Emergency crews were working at the site.

With clashes ongoing, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told reporters in Canberra that support for Ukraine is “an issue of doing what is right but also what is in Australia’s national interests.”

The “brave people of Ukraine,” he said, “led so extraordinarily by President Zelenskyy, are fighting not just for their national sovereignty and for their democracy, but they are fighting for the international rule of law. And it is an easy choice that Australia has made – it’s a bipartisan position that Australia has had – we have contributed $1.5 billion support, $1.3 billion of which is military support.”

EXPECTING US ASSISTANCE

Back in Britain, Zelenskyy spoke to reporters at Stansted before flying out, saying he did not think the U.S. would stop its assistance to Ukraine because, as “leaders of the civilized world,” they would not want to help Putin.

But he said he remained prepared for any outcome. “As regards salvaging the relationship, I think our relationship will continue,” Zelenskyy said.

He seemed more at ease in Britain, where, in addition to meeting the prime minister, he spoke with King Charles at Sandringham about his nation’s war.

“The president and the king had tea together,” an extensive and typical British affair, “for nearly an hour.”, reporters noticed.

Zelenskyy arrived on the estate by military helicopter and then was taken by a motorcade through the grounds to Sandringham House, where the king greeted him at the doorstep.

Reporters witnessed them embracing and shaking hands before chatting briefly and posing for photos. The monarch then received Zelenskyy in Sandringham’s Saloon room, where tea was served.

Zelenskyy later posted on X that he was “grateful to His Majesty Charles III for the audience,” alongside pictures of the Ukrainian flag and the Union Jack.

MOSCOW REMAINS SCEPTICAL

However, in Moscow, Leonid Slutsky, chair of Russia’s lower house’s committee on international affairs, said the summit would not save Zelenskyy. “The London summit will not save the ringleader of the Ukrainian Nazis,” Slutsky wrote on Telegram.

“Zero results, a failed attempt to restore the clown’s political reputation after his resounding failure in Washington,” he added.

Another Russian politician dismissed the summit in London for producing “no plan” to settle the war in Ukraine and stressed that Kyiv’s only hope for the future was an improvement in ties between Moscow and Washington.

Writing on the Telegram messaging app, Konstantin Kosachev, head of the foreign affairs committee of Russia’s upper house of parliament, derided the outcome of the London meeting.

He said the gathering was “a desperate attempt to pass off as success the failure of a 10-year policy of inciting Ukraine towards Russia by the same Great Britain and, until recently, the United States”. He added that “Europe has no plan.” And “if Ukraine should count on something, it can only be on progress (if there is any to come) in Russian-American relations.”

He said Zelenskyy and Starmer “cannot fail to understand this.” Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, a Putin ally, wrote on X that the summit was a “coven … to swear allegiance to the Nazi nobodies in Kyiv” and a “shameful sight.”

With harsh rhetoric on both sides, it remained unclear Sunday whether Trump would be able to oversee a peace deal, or even a ceasefire, any time soon.

(With additional reporting from Ukraine and the Worthy News Europe Bureau in Budapest.)