President Trump’s proposed guns-for-minerals deal with Ukraine reflects a radical about-face in Washington’s relations with Kyiv. Details emerge of a minerals grab that, if consummated, would rank alongside annexing Greenland or retaking the Panama Canal.

Long gone is the talk of shared values, democracy, independence, and blocking Russia’s Western expansion. In its place is the hardball language of commerce, percentages of revenues, New York law, and “payback.”

A Yale history professor and Ukraine specialist, Timothy Snyder, warns that America is fast shifting from ally to exploiter. “It could well be,” he writes after attending the Munich Conference, “that the United States intends to use the threat of Russian violence in order to seize Ukrainian wealth — ‘we could stop the war, but we need your resources first.’ A protection racket, in other words.”

“Colonialist” is the label used by the press in Britain, a country with centuries of experience with the practice. “Transactional” is the politer euphemism used by Americans to describe Washington’s new way of dealing with the world.

“Trump’s demand is iron-fist coercion by a neo-imperial power against a weaker nation with its back to the wall, and all for a commodity bonanza that exists chiefly in Trump’s head,” the Telegraph’s international business editor, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, writes Monday from London.

Writing for the conservative newspaper, he calculated in respect of a draft contract: “If this draft were accepted, Trump’s demands would amount to a higher share of Ukrainian GDP than reparations imposed on Germany at the Versailles Treaty.” In 1919, the victors in World War I imposed that treaty on Germany, the defeated party. The Russia-Ukraine war is widely viewed as a standoff.

“Team Trump’s shakedown diplomacy — America has just tried to grab Ukraine’s vast mineral wealth,” headlined the London-based news site, the Economist. “The proposal demanded his country’s mineral wealth in its entirety. Mr Zelensky had ‘an hour’ to agree.”

Another conservative voice, Canadian business writer and Ukraine observer Diane Francis writes: “Trump also plans to ruthlessly take advantage of Ukraine…His Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent presented Zelensky with an outrageous and one-sided resource deal granting Washington a 50% interest in Ukraine’s resource income, including oil and natural gas, graphite, lithium, and uranium. It was a loan shark take-it-or-leave-it arrangement.”

The showdown came Friday morning at the Munich Security Conference. Aides to Vice President Vance reportedly threatened: No signature, no meeting with the vice president. Apparently, the American side backed down. The meeting took place in the afternoon. Now, the Ukrainian side is “reviewing” the proposal.

Originally, the idea came from President Zelensky. He recalled that in 2017 his predecessor, Petro Poroshenko, ingratiated himself with President Trump, then beginning his first term, by buying coal from Pennsylvania, a swing state. This purchase led to Mr. Trump approving the transfer to Ukraine of Javelin shoulder-held, anti-tank weapons.

Last September, as candidate Trump’s campaign picked up steam, Mr. Zelensky suggested as part of his “Victory Plan,” a minerals-for-security deal with the United States. Only 12 days ago in Kyiv, in an interview with two Reuters correspondents, he unrolled in his office a once-classified mineral map of Ukraine. Poring over the map, he said: “If we are talking about a deal, then let’s do a deal. We are only for it.”

“The Americans helped the most, and therefore the Americans should earn the most,” he continued. “And they should have this priority, and they will. I would also like to talk about this with President Trump.”

Ukrainian reserves include Europe’s largest known deposits of titanium as well as large deposits of lithium. Mr. Zelensky said less than 20 percent of Ukraine’s mineral resources, including about half its rare earth deposits, are under Russian occupation. Mining has been slow to develop in post-Soviet Ukraine due to red tape, corruption, lack of security, and infighting among oligarchs.

Ukraine’s mineral wealth also has caught the eye of  Europe. In three years of war, Europe has supplied slightly more military aid to Ukraine than America, according to figures released Friday by Germany’s Kiel Institute for the World Economy.

Six months before Russia launched its full-scale attack on Ukraine, the European Union and Ukraine signed a memorandum of understanding covering critical raw materials vital for aerospace, defense, electronics, automotive, and renewable energy.

Ukraine could displace China as the EU’s top “supplier of raw materials and components for these technologies of the future for Europe,”  Vice President Maroš Šefčovič of the European Commission told Interfax-Ukraine after he signed the document. “You can do better than China.” He said Europe supports Ukraine building “the entire vertically integrated supply chain around critical raw materials and added value stays in Ukraine as much as possible.”

So it was with shock that Mr. Zelensky learned last Wednesday in Kyiv that he had one hour to review a contract and sign it with Treasury Secretary Bessent, then visiting in Ukraine. Mr. Zelensky reportedly protested. “We are not a raw materials country. It’s about investment — not just taking our resources.”

Senator Graham said that the contract can be tweaked to create a win-win for both countries. Mr. Trump “can go to the American people and say, ‘Ukraine is not a burden, it is a benefit,’”  he told reporters in Munich. “If we sign this minerals agreement, Putin is screwed, because Trump will defend the deal.”

After Munich, Mr. Trump’s national security advisor, Mike Waltz, told Fox News Sunday that the deal is “protection in and of itself. I can’t think of any better security guarantee than being co-invested with President Trump.”

“The American people deserve to be recouped, deserve to have some kind of payback for the billions they have invested in this war,” he continued. “I think that Zelensky would be very wise to enter into this agreement with the United States.”

According to Ukrainians, the document is dangerously fuzzy on  details for security guarantees. Ukraine has been burned on that before. In the 1990s, Ukraine shipped to Russia its entire Soviet legacy nuclear arsenal  — 1,700 atom bombs. In return, they got the Budapest Memorandum. The three foreign signatories — America, Britain, and Russia — promised to guarantee Ukraine’s borders.

This time around Ukraine envisions security in the form of continued military aid, the stationing of Western nation troops to defend an armistice line, and numerous mining and processing joint ventures with American companies. This intertwining of the two economies would create an enduring American interest in defending Ukraine.

However, without serious security guarantees, private Western mining companies are unlikely to risk their money in Ukraine. “This is about investments,” Mr. Zelensky told reporters in Munich. “You can think about how you can distribute profits when the security guarantees are clear. So far, I haven’t seen it there.” 

To nudge Ukraine along, Mr. Trump seems to have made a veiled threat, telling reporters: “They may make a deal. They may not make a deal. They may be Russian someday. Or they may not be Russian someday. But I want this money back.”