EDITORIAL: Mine deal could shaft Ukraine

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American President Donald Trump has announced he’ll travel to Saudi Arabia to attend peace talks on Ukraine. He also announced sweeping sanctions on Russia, after that country launched a brutal assault on civilian targets and strategic Ukrainian infrastructure.

It was predictable, given that Trump this week froze its powerful missiles after cutting off intelligence sharing with the beleaguered nation. Ukraine faces a bloodbath and civilians are left helpless in the face of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s brutal assault.

As the talks in Saudi get underway, it’s a good time to look at the history of the region.  In 1994, Britain, the U.S., the U.K. and Russia signed the Budapest Agreement, in which Ukraine pledged to remove all nuclear weapons and not to become a nuclear state. In return, the signatories — notably Russia — pledged to respect Ukraine’s international boundaries, along with those of Belarus and Kazakhstan. At that time, Ukraine held a large nuclear arsenal.

That deal was breached in 2014, when Russia invaded Crimea.

Trump frequently returns to the refrain of the billions of dollars in military aid his country has supplied to Ukraine. According to the U.S. State Department website, they’ve provided $31.7 billion “from U.S. stockpiles” since August 2021.  Some of that weaponry was old. Much of that money was spent on American arms manufacturers. But it’s nonetheless true that Ukraine would not have survived without the U.S., although other nations have stepped up. The European Union has supplied $53 billion in military aid.

There are also questions around the deal to access the rare earth minerals. Some observers say it could take up to a decade to extract them. The devastation left by the war will make mining those resources difficult.

“Russia’s war against Ukraine has littered massive swaths of the country with landmines and unexploded ordnance,” says the State Department website. An area the size of Maryland, Virginia and Connecticut combined is contaminated. This will delay or prevent reconstruction.

“They may also continue to kill and maim Ukrainian civilians for years to come.”

No wonder Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s skeptical about the mine deal. Ukraine’s already been shafted by its neighbour. These days, even an American signature on a treaty or trade deal isn’t with the paper it’s written on.