White House Denies Reuters Report US and Ukraine Reached Agreement to Sign Minerals Deal

AP Photo/ Mystyslav Chernov

Reuters reported on Tuesday that the United States and Ukraine will sign a minerals deal after all, a stunning reversal after last week’s disastrous Oval Office meeting between President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky — but that report was denied by sources at the White House a few hours later.

From the original report by Reuters:

U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration and Ukraine plan to sign the much-debated minerals deal following a disastrous Oval Office meeting Friday in which Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy was dismissed from the building, four people familiar with the situation said on Tuesday.

President Donald Trump has told his advisers that he wants to announce the agreement in his address to Congress Tuesday evening, three of the sources said, cautioning that the deal had yet to be signed and the situation could change.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Ukraine’s presidential administration in Kyiv and the Ukrainian embassy in Washington did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Last Friday’s White House confab between Trump, Zelensky, and Vice President JD Vance started out cordially enough, but broke down into a bitter conflict with other administration officials and the press corps looking on as Vance complained Zelensky had not shown enough gratitude and Zelensky argued that Russia could not be trusted to honor agreements after Putin had violated them so many times. The meeting soon ended with the Ukrainian delegation being asked to leave without the agreement being signed and without even getting lunch. Trump’s allies blamed Zelensky for the mess, the president was reportedly demanding an “explicit public apology” from Zelensky before coming back to the negotiating table, the Kremlin cheered the whole debacle, and world leaders publicly declared support for Ukraine.

The unsigned deal would have laid the framework for a U.S.-Ukraine partnership to develop Ukrainian natural resources, but included no explicit security guarantees, a sticking point for Zelensky after so many broken treaties, including 1994’s Budapest Memorandum under which Ukraine gave up its sizable nuclear arsenal in exchange for security assurances from the U.S., Russia, and the UK.

This week brought more tough news for the Ukrainians as they seek resources to help fend off Russia’s invading forces, with Trump continuing to publicly lambast Zelensky and media outlets reporting that the White House had ordered a pause on all pending U.S. aid to Ukraine.

The Reuters article seemed like good news for Ukraine, but Fox News senior White House correspondent Jacqui Heinrich tweeted that the White House was denying the report. “Sources at the White House saying this Reuters report is not true – there’s been no movement on this yet.”

Trump is scheduled to deliver a speech to a joint session to Congress Tuesday night at 9 pm ET (a president’s very first remarks to Congress during a term is not designated as a “State of the Union” speech because of the short time in office at that point). Numerous Democrats had announced they had planned to wear Ukrainian flags or colors to voice opposition to Trump’s recent actions, or boycott the speech altogether.

As of 4:45 pm ET, Reuters seemed to be sticking by their original reporting, with the online article indicating it had been recently updated but with the headline unchanged and the text still including multiple sources saying the two countries planned to sign the deal in advance of Trump’s speech Tuesday evening.

This is a breaking news story and has been updated.