In 2025, J.C. Ellis wrote, “Trump Needs a Plan on Ukraine’s Buried Treasure,” where he argued that Washington should enact a strategy for Ukraine that ensures Ukrainian control and allied access to its storehouse of critical minerals. A year later, after a critical minerals investment plan for Ukraine has been established, we asked J.C. to revisit his original argument.Image: MidjourneyIn your 2025 article, you argued that Washington should enact a strategy for Ukraine that ensures Ukrainian control and allied access to its massive storehouse of critical minerals. A few months after your article was written, the United States and Ukraine signed an agreement establishing a reconstruction investment fund, where critical minerals are a large part of the agreement. How does this plan compare to the one you envisioned? Does the agreement sufficiently ensure that both parties benefit economically and strategically? The article, published two months in advance of the Ukraine-United States Mineral Resource Agreement, prefigured an intense debate over the future capitalization of Ukraine’s critical mineral wealth. Most academic analyses and policy commentaries cast the agreement in an unfavorable light: an example of Trumpian “transnationalism” at best, “neocolonialism” and “pure extortion” at worst. The reality is far less nefarious. The agreement established a partnership company — the U.S.-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund — supervised by a six-member board (three American, three Ukrainian) to channel investment to Ukraine’s natural resources sector and related infrastructure. The initiative was kick-started by a $150 million initial capital infusion and, by recent accounts, has gotten off to an energetic start. While the agreement falls short of the wide-ranging, multilateral geoeconomic framework outlined in the article, its structure and goals are seeds of the same strategic logic — one that serves the interests of both the United States and Ukraine.The most important similarities between the two lie in their diagnosis of
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