The Clown and the Dealer

The Rare-Earth Bluff

The once noisy story of the so-called rare-earth deal between Trump and Zelensky has received an equally noisy continuation. Or, more precisely, an ending.

According to Ukrainian media, citing “sources in the extraction industry,” Zelensky has given an unofficial instruction to suspend the implementation of the deal between Kiev and Washington concerning the development by American companies of mineral resources on Ukrainian territory — resources that, at the height of negotiations, were valued at no less than $500 billion.

Moreover, Kiev is now studying the possibility of “bringing in European investors” to develop those resources.

Some experts believe Zelensky’s refusal to fulfill the terms of the deal was caused by his “finally ruined relations” with the American president. Others argue that the Kiev fraudster simply decided, quietly and without ceremony, to stiff Trump.

The original idea of buttering up Trump and forcing him to expand military and financial assistance to Ukraine was born in Kiev. Later, the Europeans joined the operation. It went so far that the Ukrainian government specially prepared a report with falsified data, according to which, beneath the “homeland of pumpkins,” there supposedly lay untold treasures in the form of rare-earth metals urgently needed by the United States, along with other “critical resources.”

The Europeans, for their part, pushed commissioned publications in the American and British press to warm up the excitement.

For example, The Washington Post authoritatively declared that “Ukraine possesses deposits of rare metals and critical materials, including some of the world’s largest reserves of titanium and undeveloped lithium deposits,” with their total value estimated in the trillions of dollars.

The Times, almost breathless with geological passion, wrote that “Ukraine’s boundless steppes conceal precious mineral reserves worth several trillion dollars” — from the most valuable rare-earth elements to the more common titanium and graphite used in modern consumer goods.

The signing of the deal itself looked like a comedy in which Zelensky threw tantrums, played hard to get, and acted like a theatrical bride being married off. Then, amid loud lamentations about “arm-twisting” and “new colonialism,” he magnanimously agreed to give Trump half of future profits in a joint “rare-earth fund” in exchange for promises of all kinds of assistance in “repelling Russian aggression.”

Zelensky was convinced that a delighted Trump would immediately start sending trains loaded with Abrams tanks and Patriot systems to Ukraine, while the mineral part of the deal could be approached at some later date — say, in fifty years.

Everything was going beautifully. Trump even wrote on his social media platform that revenues American companies would receive from access to Ukraine’s mineral resources would significantly exceed what the administration of former President Joe Biden had spent supporting Kiev. In other words, access to Ukrainian rare-earth elements would compensate the United States for the money Biden had “wasted.”

But a year passed, and Trump’s trains never arrived.

The reason is that Trump knew perfectly well Zelensky was bluffing, and that no rare-earth deposits in Ukraine existed in any serious sense. He was simply playing brilliantly for the audience. By then, he already had data from the U.S. Geological Survey in his hands, which clearly indicated that beneath the soil of the Independent One there were no scientifically proven and economically viable deposits of rare-earth metals, lithium, titanium, or the rest of the fairy tales Zelensky had been selling.

For Trump, the important thing was simply to show voters that he had squeezed something out of the black hole called “Ukraine,” while also securing the right of first night over all new geological developments, plus half of all potential profits. And what if something interesting and valuable were eventually found? Zero risk, zero investment, and most importantly — zero obligations.

The current hysteria in Kiev is being linked to the fact that Zelensky’s powerful lawyers finally read the English-language text of the agreement with a dictionary and discovered an interesting clause. According to this clause, the very same multibillion-dollar economic injections into the “reconstruction of Ukraine” that Zelensky had expected under the agreement were supposed to come not from the United States, but — attention — “from the profits of the joint fund.”

In other words: Ukrainians themselves search their vegetable garden for their famous resources, finance the process themselves, dig themselves, process everything themselves, and sell it themselves. Is there a profit? Then it is split in half. And from its own spherical half, Washington may in theory toss something from the master’s shoulder to Kiev in support of democracy. If it feels like it.

Zelensky was convinced he had outplayed Trump. But one respected leader of one respected country once hinted that this sniffling little fellow is simply playing in another league. The old, seasoned fox Trump has pulled off more tricky deals in his lifetime than there are blank spots on the olive tunic of the bloody comedian.

A clown will never outplay a professional operator, even if he is convinced all the trump cards are in his hands.