US, Ukraine sign memorandum as first step to minerals deal, senior Ukrainian official says

KYIV/WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Ukraine said on Thursday that Kyiv and Washington had signed a memorandum as an initial step towards clinching an agreement on developing mineral resources in Ukraine, a deal promoted by U.S. President Donald Trump.

Trump said the accord could be signed next week.

Yulia Svyrydenko, Ukraine's first deputy prime minister and economy minister, wrote on social media that the memorandum had been signed.

"We are happy to announce the signing, with our American partners, of a Memorandum of Intent, which paves the way for an Economic Partnership Agreement and the establishment of the Investment Fund for the Reconstruction of Ukraine," she wrote.

A Ukrainian delegation travelled to Washington at the end of last week for negotiations after the Trump administration offered a new, more expansive deal. The initial framework agreement that was agreed to has never been signed.

Trump, speaking to reporters at the White House, said: "We have a minerals deal, which I guess is going to be signed on Thursday."

Trump has pushed for a compact that would allow the United States to have privileged access to Ukraine's natural resources and critical minerals in what he casts as repayment for military aid provided by Washington to Ukraine under former President Joe Biden.

Sitting alongside Trump in the Oval Office on Thursday, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said "we're still working on the details" and that the signing could come by next Friday.

"It's substantially what we'd agreed on previously," he said. "When the president was here, we had a memorandum of understanding. We went straight to the big deal, and I think it's an 80-page agreement and that's what we'll be signing."

The White House did not respond to a request for further details on the timing and contents of the agreement.

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskiy had said earlier that the two countries could sign the memorandum online later in the day.

"This is a memorandum of intent. And we have positive, constructive intentions," Zelenskiy told reporters in Kyiv.

He added that the offer to sign the memorandum before the comprehensive deal, which would require ratification in the Ukrainian parliament, had come from the U.S. side.

Svyrydenko earlier said that Kyiv and Washington had made significant progress while discussing the agreement, and the memorandum was the first stage to record this. 

(Reporting by Yuliia Dysa in Kyiv, Angelo Amante and Trevor Hunnicutt in Washington; editing by Mark Heinrich, Anna Driver, Ron Popeski and Rod Nickel)