Kyiv is pushing back against President Donald Trump’s calls for Ukraine’s resources to be used as compensation to the US for aid delivered under President Joe Biden.

But large parts of Ukraine’s resource base is in its industrial eastern Donbas region, where Russia has seized territory and is still advancing.

“We have information that, unfortunately, there is about US$350 billion worth of these useful critical materials in temporarily occupied territory,” deputy prime minister Yulia Svyrydenko told a news conference in Kyiv.

She added that some statistics on the deposits were “obsolete”, but the estimate was based on geological surveys and open-source data.

President Volodymyr Zelensky wants concrete security guarantees from Trump in exchange for access to critical resources like lithium, titanium, uranium and rare earth metals.

They are vital for the production of electronics.

Trump and his aides have expressed frustration at Zelensky’s unwillingness to sign a deal.

A source in Ukraine told AFP yesterday the Ukrainian leader was “not ready” to agree to the current US demands.

His chief of staff, Andriy Yermak, today insisted that negotiations were proceeding in a “normal” fashion.

“No one has refused anything. The normal work process is underway. And it can always take a day or months,” he said at a news conference in Kyiv.