Agreement ready on rare earths, Zelensky to meet Trump on Friday

The only certainty is that Volodymyr Zelensky will cross the threshold of the White House on Friday. The signing of the agreement on rare earths - albeit one step away - will only be decided by the closed-door meeting with Donald Trump. The American president, insisting on the mantra "we will get our money back", is increasing the pressure for Kiev to close the $500 billion agreement.

But the message from Ukraine is clear: the knot of the conditions is far from untied. The focus is not only on the division of natural resources, but above all on the future support of the United States and on those security guarantees that are also essential for Europe, a point on which the draft of the text leaked to the American media does not offer explicit commitments from Washington. Ukraine can indeed "forget about joining NATO", thundered the commander-in-chief, assuring however that he wants to work "hard for a good" final peace agreement that allows Kiev to recover as much territory as possible and also imposes concessions on Vladimir Putin. In the text on the table - which leaves spaces at the bottom ready for the signatures of US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha - the plan to create a joint investment fund between the United States and Ukraine for reconstruction has emerged, fueled by 50% of the profits from the exploitation of rare earths. A compromise aimed at guaranteeing Washington a decisive weight in the management of Kiev's wealth, while promising to give oxygen to the Ukrainian economy, transforming the country's resources into a driving force for recovery. No concrete commitment however on security guarantees, only a vague reference to American support for Ukrainian "efforts" to obtain those "necessary to establish a lasting peace".

An exercise in lexical balancing that leaves Zelensky's reservations open. Without further clarification, was the Ukrainian president's warning, the agreement "is only a beginning, a framework agreement" and its "success" will depend on Friday's face-to-face meeting. From the White House, however, Trump continues to unload all the weight onto Europe, the neighboring country at war, without backing down on the need for European peacekeeping troops - which in his view would be "a very easy part" among the conditions of the peace agreement - even in spite of Moscow's refusal. "I have no intention of giving security guarantees. We will ensure that Europe does it," he cut short during his first cabinet meeting, shifting the center of gravity of responsibility to the other side of the Atlantic where diplomatic coordination is dense. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the leaders of the Twenty-seven will welcome the Ukrainian president to London this weekend, the day after his confrontation with the White House tenant, for the summit scheduled for Sunday on common defense. A small-format meeting, which will also be attended by Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, to continue to reiterate support for Kiev and lay the foundations for decisions that, as anticipated by the President of the European Council Antonio Costa, for the member states - divided on the peacekeepers to deploy - will in any case arrive next week, at the extraordinary summit on March 6 in Brussels. It is impossible, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk reiterated, "to accept Ukraine's capitulation to Russia's brazen demands, including territorial ones".