Colombia's president slams Ukraine's plan to sign precious metals deal with US as ‘stupidity’

By Zeynep Katre Oran and Seda Sevencan

ANKARA/ISTANBUL (AA) – The Colombian president on Wednesday criticized Ukraine’s reported plan to sign a deal allocating a portion of the country's precious metal revenues to the US, calling its President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s "stupidity."

“Zelenskyy's stupidity, and I say this clearly, for allowing himself to be manipulated by Western Europeans, who do not know where they are going, whether towards Hitler or towards nothing; they fight with their Slavic brothers and end up giving Ukraine to the Americans. !Stupidity!” Gustavo Petro said in a statement on X, alongside a news report about Ukraine's potential deal with Washington.

On Feb. 3, US President Donald Trump said Washington was interested in acquiring rare earth minerals from Ukraine.

Trump said the war in Ukraine must end and emphasized that if the US continues to support Kyiv, there should be something in return.

The US president said on Tuesday that he has heard Zelenskyy will pay him a visit on Friday, suggesting an openness to the meeting amid ongoing negotiations over a critical minerals deal.

"I hear that he's coming on Friday. Certainly, it's okay with me if he'd like to, and he would like to sign it together with me. And I understand that's a big deal, a very big deal," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office, referring to the agreement that would see Ukraine share a portion of its critical mineral revenues with the US.

"It's a very big deal. It could be a trillion-dollar deal. It could be whatever, but it's rare earths and other things. And look, we're spending hundreds of billions of dollars on Ukraine and Russia fighting a war that should have never, ever happened," he added.

Earlier on Monday, Trump said he expected to meet Zelenskyy at the White House as soon as this week to sign the agreement, which he described as being "very close" to completion.

Ukraine has so far declined to sign the agreement as negotiations continue over major sticking points, including security guarantees for the country and whether the mineral rights would be exchanged solely for future US military aid or whether they would cover previous installments that were given to Kyiv by the Biden administration.