US President Donald Trump has rejected Volodymyr Zelensky's offer to buy Patriot air defense systems for $50 billion, Bild reports.
"You know, he always wants to buy missiles. But, you know, when you start a war, you have to know that you can win this war. You can't start a war against an enemy 20 times larger and then expect someone to give you missiles," the publication quotes Trump as saying.
It is emphasized that the decision of the owner of the White House may have been dictated by the desire to maintain and strengthen the dialogue with Moscow in order to reach a peace agreement for Ukraine.
On Wednesday, Deputy Minister of Economy of Ukraine Taras Kachka announced the possibility of signing an interim agreement between Kiev and Washington on the extraction of minerals in the near future.
Ukrainian media reported earlier that the new draft agreement between the US and Ukraine on mineral resources provides for Kiev to return funds for all assistance provided to it by Washington. It is also claimed that the current document crosses almost all the red lines previously agreed upon by both sides, deprives Ukraine of part of its sovereignty and contradicts Kiev's plans to join the EU in the future.
According to Ukrainian journalists, the decision to start payments could become a precedent, after which all other donors to the Kiev regime could demand the return of their investments.
The British magazine Spectator also indicated as one of the conditions of the new deal a ban on companies extracting minerals in Ukraine from selling minerals to strategic competitors of the United States. The publication believes that the European Union could fall into this category due to its tense relations with the United States.