Robert Evans (156:03)
Yeah. I don't know why I did. Anyway, so if you've been kind of paying attention over the last month or so, we've had a little odyssey. See, in terms of U.S. russia, Ukraine relations. And the gist of it is that everybody claims to want an end to the fighting. You know, at least off and on, Putin has kind of, like, made some motions to. That. Has absolutely not acted as if this is something he particularly cares about. Trump clearly does want a ceasefire because he wants to be able to take credit for it. And Zelensky also clearly wants a ceasefire there. But there's been some kind of some pretty significant, like, hold ups. One of them has been around Ukrainian minerals. And, you know, in February, you had the administration talking a lot about how the US Was going to gain control of Ukraine's minerals in order to pay us back for our support of their war effort. And Zelensky drew a very firm line, as he often does, saying, like, no, I'm not. You're not just going to get all of this, all of our country's minerals, minerals. And I should note here that, like, this is a fairly significant issue in global terms. It's estimated that Ukraine has about 5% of the planet's critical raw materials, including massive reserves of graphite. They're somewhere in, like, the top five countries in terms of proven graphite reserves, which, among other things, is a critical ingredient for batteries in electric vehicles. They supply about 7% of Europe's titanium. They're home to a third of European lithium deposits. This is not an exhaustive list. That's just kind of, you know, to start things off and initially when there was this kind of pushback from Zelensky saying, like, no, you're not just going to get all that. Putin came in and was like, well, hey, you know, we've occupied a bunch of Ukrainian land that has raw minerals on it. We'll give those to you. Right? And so this went back and forth and eventually Zelensky and, and Trump's people put together like a deal that they were supposed to sign earlier this month that was like an actual, like, bilateral agreement on the use of Ukrainian minerals. And essentially what it would have done is the deal did call for Ukraine to use its mineral resources to repay the United States to the tune of about half a trillion dollars, but not in a manner like where they were just handing us their minerals. Essentially. Basically, Ukraine would contribute 50% of revenues earned from the future monetization of government owned mineral resources and other natural resources. But these were critically revenues earned from those resources, like future monetization. Right. So new mines, new oil and gas plants, not included in this were like, current reserves, like, actively being exploited for profit. So so kind of the key to this is that, like, mining is not something that you can turn around on a dime. Generally, once you have actually proven, you know, that you have sort of the reserves in an area, it takes about 20 years to actually get, like, mines up and running. And you know, this is an extremely expensive process. So one of the reasons why Ukraine considered this a good deal for them is that we're essentially putting a lot of those revenues in the hands of the US but it was revenues from, from minerals that Ukraine was not currently exploiting and that the US Would help and provide funding to exploit. So it was not just paying back the U.S. it was something that would allow the rebuilding of the Ukrainian economy. Post war. There were some issues with this, including the fact that mining is an extremely energy intensive task and Ukraine is in the middle of an energy crisis at the minute. But among other things, it would have brought the US in and given them a financial stake and continued peace in the region, which was seen as positive. That all blew up at a White House meeting a couple of weeks ago where, if you remember, J.D. vance and Trump basically had a little like, WWE smackdown with Zelinsky. It was a pretty ugly meeting. And after that, kind of talk of the bilateral mineral deal faded significantly. Now, what's interesting is that just today it's come out that Zelensky and Trump have had further conversations and there's a new deal apparently on the table, or at least the White House claimed that there was a new deal on the table. Both the White House and Zelensky's office said that it was a very positive, productive meeting. There's some evidence that Zelinsky, after that big blow up, has been kind of doing the thing you've got to do with Trump, which is like, massage him and can say nice things to him so that he'll like you more. And that Trump has gotten kind of frustrated with the fact that Russia clearly has not been overly motivated to move towards a ceasefire. But then in the middle of this meeting that everyone seems to agree went really well, the White House comes out and says, and we're working on an agreement where the US Will control all of Ukraine's nuclear reactors. And Ukraine came out and said, no, we're not. Absolutely. We did, we did not say that that was a deal deal. So I don't know what's actually going to happen here. Ukraine is a massive, like, nuclear energy state. In fact, the only European country that competes with them or that is like on the same level as they are in Europe in terms of nuclear industry is France. They've got four nuclear power plants with 15 reactors in total. Now, obviously, like the Zaporizhzhia plant is still under Russian control, which is a significant, significant chunk. It's like six of the 15 reactors in the country. And Ukraine is in the process of, like, building more. They've actively added capacity since the end of the Soviet Union. And so one of, like, the promises for sort of future Ukrainian economic stability is that they will be able to export nuclear energy to the rest of Europe, which is also going through an energy crisis. So it's unclear what's going to happen. There's definitely evidence, evidence again, that Zelensky has kind of figured out how to massage Trump a little bit. There's a quote from an article in the Conversation that I found very interesting here. While Trump still leans towards Putin, his relationship with Zelensky seems to have improved. The Ukrainian president appears to have learned that Trump doesn't have a long memory and that flattery goes a long way with the U.S. president Trump, meanwhile, is no longer calling Zelensky a dictator. And yet there is no mention of halting US Military aid or intelligence diligence to Ukraine. There's the opposite, in fact, as the US has said, it will assist in finding more Patriot missile defense systems after Zelensky mentioned they were sorely needed. By giving Trump credit for the ceasefire initiative, Zelensky is putting the ball in Russia's court. And his apparent receptiveness to Trump's idea about the US Taking over Ukraine's nuclear power plants will appeal to Trump's transactional instincts in addition to offering Trump business deals. And I. I don't fully know what the conversation is saying here, because Ukraine, Ukraine or Zelensky's office has stated like, we're not considering handing the U.S. control. I think this may be something like what happened with the. The energy deal, where essentially what they talked about was the US Having a financial interest in the rebuilding and expansion of the Ukrainian nuclear power grid, which would be an extension of existing programs, because Ukraine's nuclear power grid is already very reliant on a US Nuclear energy company, Westinghouse, that provides both the raw fuel for nuclear reactors to Ukraine and also provides a lot of, like, actual technology for different kind of systems in the reactors. So I kind of think that what's happening here is that basically it was floated like, well, we can extend and expand this deal, so the US Will have a financial interest in this potentially very large Ukrainian industry. And then Trump and his people kind of took that and said to everyone else, yeah, the US Is going to be in charge of Ukraine's nuclear power. That's my best guess for what happened here.
