{"id":313653,"date":"2025-08-14T07:12:50","date_gmt":"2025-08-14T07:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=313653"},"modified":"2025-08-16T07:02:23","modified_gmt":"2025-08-16T07:02:23","slug":"trump-to-offer-putin-minerals-for-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/?p=313653","title":{"rendered":"Trump to offer Putin minerals for peace"},"content":{"rendered":"

Connor Stringer and Joe Barnes \u2013 The Telegraph Aug 13, 2020<\/strong><\/h1>\n

Donald Trump is preparing to offer Vladimir Putin access to rare earth minerals to incentivise him to end the war in Ukraine<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The US president will arrive at the much-anticipated meeting with his Russian counterpart<\/a> on Friday armed with a number of money-making opportunities for Putin.<\/p>\n

They will include opening up Alaska\u2019s natural resources to Moscow and lifting some of the American sanctions on Russia\u2019s aviation industry, The Telegraph can reveal.<\/p>\n

Proposals include giving Putin access to the rare earth minerals<\/a> in the Ukrainian territories currently occupied by Russia.<\/p>\n

Scott Bessent, the US treasury secretary, is understood to be among administration figures briefing Mr Trump ahead of his meeting with Putin<\/a> in Anchorage.<\/p>\n

Mr Bessent is exploring the economic trade-offs the US can make with Russia in order to expedite a ceasefire agreement<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Speaking at a press conference on Wednesday, Mr Trump said Putin would face \u201csevere consequences\u201d if he did not agree to end the war in Ukraine<\/a> at their meeting on Friday.<\/p>\n

The US leader also revealed his intention to seek an immediate second meeting with Putin, this time involving Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine\u2019s president<\/a>, after their one-on-one talks in Alaska.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump said: \u201cIf the first one goes ok, we\u2019ll have a quick second one. I would like to do it almost immediately, and we\u2019ll have a quick second meeting between President Putin and President Zelensky and myself, if they\u2019d like to have me there.\u201d<\/p>\n

The US president had attended a virtual summit with Mr Zelensky and other European leaders including Sir Keir Starmer<\/a>, Emmanuel Macron and Freidrich Merz as part of a series of calls ahead of the Alaska meeting.<\/p>\n

Speaking after the talks, Mr Zelensky said Mr Trump backed security guarantees for Ukraine. \u201cThere should be security guarantees,\u201d he told a press conference alongside Mr Merz, the German chancellor.<\/p>\n

\u201cPresident Trump said that he supports this and America\u2019s readiness to take part.\u201d<\/p>\n

In the past months, Washington has kept security guarantees \u2013 some kind of commitment that America would be willing to enforce the terms of any peace deal \u2013 for Ukraine<\/a> off the table, despite it being a key demand from Kyiv.<\/p>\n

The UK, France and Germany have been working towards creating a peacekeeping force without the direct involvement of the Americans<\/a> but had hoped the US may offer support such as air cover.<\/p>\n

Offering an update on the plans following Wednesday\u2019s talks, Sir Keir said his \u201ccoalition of the willing\u201d<\/a> was ready to implement a ceasefire plan as soon as a peace deal was agreed.<\/p>\n

The plans \u201care now ready in a form that can be used if we get to that ceasefire\u201d, the Prime Minister said, adding that \u201creal progress\u201d on security guarantees for Ukraine had been made.<\/p>\n

European leaders including Emmanuel Macron<\/a>, the French president, said the calls with Mr Trump were \u201cpositive\u201d. After the calls, Mr Zelensky said Putin was \u201cbluffing\u201d when he said \u201che does not care about the sanctions and that they\u2019re not working\u201d.<\/p>\n

As well as lifting sanctions, The Telegraph can now reveal that the US is preparing to offer Putin other financial incentives to end the war, including access to rare earth minerals in the areas of Ukraine currently occupied by Russia.<\/p>\n

Ukraine is thought to hold 10 per cent of the world\u2019s reserves of lithium, used in the production of batteries. Two of its largest lithium deposits are in areas held by Russia, and Putin has staked his claim to the valuable minerals found in the regions his forces occupy.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere are a range of incentives, in which a potential mineral\/rare earth deal could be one,\u201d a source with knowledge of the proposals told The Telegraph.<\/p>\n

In May, the US signed a rare earth mineral deal with Kyiv<\/a>, allowing it to exploit Ukraine\u2019s ample natural resources. Washington will need to establish new mining operations, which could be accelerated by Russian co-operation.<\/p>\n

The president\u2019s America First policy has seen him strike several mineral deals since his return to the Oval Office, most notably with Ukraine and Kazakhstan.<\/p>\n

Other incentives include lifting export bans on parts and equipment needed to service Russian planes, swathes of which have fallen into disrepair.<\/p>\n

Western countries have restricted Moscow\u2019s access to crucial spare components and other equipment since its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, forcing airlines and the military to cannibalise old aircraft for replacement parts.<\/p>\n

Nearly 30 per cent of Russia\u2019s Western-made planes, cut off from maintenance, could be grounded within the next five years, Sergei Chemezov, the head of Rostec, Russia\u2019s state-owned defence conglomerate, suggested this year.<\/p>\n

Lifting sanctions on Russian aircraft could prove lucrative for the American manufacturer Boeing. With a fleet of more than 700 planes dominated by Airbus and Boeing, Russian airlines could return to the American suppliers for critical parts and maintenance.<\/p>\n

Recent major incidents highlight an urgent need to prevent the fleet degrading. In late July, a Soviet-era Antonov An-24, built in 1976, crashed in the country\u2019s far east, killing all 48 people on board. Days later, the Russian flag carrier Aeroflot grounded dozens of flights following a crippling cyber attack<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Mr Trump is also considering offering Russia opportunities to tap into the valuable natural resources in the strait that separates it from the US. Alaska, separated from Russia by just three miles of the Bering Strait, is estimated to hold significant undiscovered oil and gas reserves, including 13 per cent of the world\u2019s oil.<\/p>\n

Developing Russia\u2019s presence in the strait would bolster Putin\u2019s strategic interests in the Arctic region, which accounted for 80 per cent of Russia\u2019s gas production<\/a> in 2022.<\/p>\n

UK government sources told The Telegraph that such incentives could be acceptable to Europe so long as it was not seen as rewarding Russia. \u201cThe sense is that it has to be presented to align with public opinion around this, it cannot be seen as a reward for Putin,\u201d one said.<\/p>\n

Israel\u2019s occupation of the West Bank could be used as a model for ending the war. Russia would have military and economic control of occupied Ukraine under its own governing body, similar to Israel\u2019s de facto rule of Palestinian territory.<\/p>\n

The idea was raised in discussions between Steve Witkoff, Mr Trump\u2019s special envoy and his Russian counterparts, according to The Times.<\/p>\n

Source\u00a0<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The West’s Ukrainian proxies are well on the way to suffering a decisive defeat at the hands of the Russian Army. This is Trump\u2019s way of transforming that defeat, at least in the public eye\u2019s, into a \u201cpeace agreement\u201d by bribing the Russians. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39262,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[58,91],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-313653","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-Current_Affairs","category-russia"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313653","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/39262"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=313653"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313653\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":313664,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/313653\/revisions\/313664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=313653"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=313653"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.thetruthseeker.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=313653"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}