A tense, week-long war of words between Donald Trump and Volodymyr Zelensky seems to have reached a happy denouement with the announcement of the US-Ukraine minerals deal. The Ukrainian President is expected to travel to Washington on Friday to sign the agreement.

A reconstruction fund for the country is to be established into which Ukraine will contribute 50% of its proceeds from the “future monetisation” of minerals, hydrocarbons, and associated infrastructure. While the US will have a substantial (though as yet unconfirmed) stake in the jointly-owned and -managed fund, the initial demand of a $500 billion payout has notably been dropped.

Ukrainian officials have also successfully wrangled with their American counterparts over the inclusion of a vague reference to security guarantees. Though this falls short of any specific far-reaching American commitment, Kyiv intends the deal to be a “framework” for future discussions. Giving Washington a vested economic interest in its resources is no bad place to start when dealing with a transactional administration.

The EU might be kicking itself. After all, the bloc first signed a strategic partnership with Ukraine on raw materials back in July 2021, even if this was subsequently overtaken by events. (This didn’t stop it from allegedly pitching its own “win-win” minerals proposal on Monday.) But could it be that the open goal was really Europe’s to miss?

According to a senior Labour figure, the UK was involved in extensive negotiations for the whole of last year relating to our securing exclusive access to the precious metals, but adequate Government support was not forthcoming. In the end, Azerbaijan won the auction for Ukraine’s titanium mine. Naturally, Trump’s intervention has changed the dynamics, but the UK still remains extremely interested in negotiating with both the US and Ukraine on access.

There has, however, been much confusion about what assets Ukraine actually possesses. Despite the excited clamour around the supposed “trillions” on offer, Dr Robert Muggah (co-founder of Canadian geopolitical risk firm SecDev, which undertook the original study on Ukraine’s natural resource holdings in 2022) explained to me that this should be understood as the total hypothetical assessment of all that Ukraine has. The fact is that, for all the overwhelming media focus on minerals, the majority of the country’s natural wealth comprises hydrocarbons — resources that are already being exploited and of little strategic import from a geopolitical perspective.

When taking just rare earths and critical minerals together (erroneously conflated by too many people), Muggah said: “We’re likely talking about hundreds of billions by the time we get down to the overall amount that reasonably can be extracted over the next 15 to 25 years — and that’s assuming a high volume of investment and sufficient security guarantees for mining companies.” Certainly, any notion that Ukraine has “$500 billion worth of rare earth” is, as Bloomberg’s Javier Blas put it, a completely fantastical regurgitation of “conspiracy-theory claims found on the blogosphere”, propagated by the general lack of basic geological knowledge.

Fortunately, Britain need not concern itself with these rare earths or even critical minerals like lithium (which has suffered a price crash of more than 80% since its peak in 2022). Our key focus should instead be on gaining access to the two non-negotiable elements of any contemporary industrial strategy: graphite and titanium.

With Starmer due to pay homage to the King himself today, is this a chance for us to make our case? The Prime Minister showcased his more ruthless streak in slashing aid to boost defence spending and even signalled he is “ready and willing” to put UK troops on the ground to safeguard Ukraine (and, essentially, America’s investments there).

Given all this, access to a share of both the American and Ukrainian cups is, as my source insists, a “reasonable request”. But whether our scrappy attempt at the Art of the Deal is met with respect or derision by the master deal-maker himself is anyone’s guess.

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Sang-Hwa Lee is a foreign policy researcher and lead writer at Listening to the Other Side.

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