United States President Donald Trump said he expects a long-elusive critical minerals deal with Ukraine will be signed next week.
"I assume they're going to live up to the deal, so we'll see. But we have a deal on that," Trump told reporters in the Oval Office on Thursday as he hosted Italian Premier Giorgia Meloni.
Trump said the deal would be signed before he checked with Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, and then said it would be inked "soon."
Asked if Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy would be returning to the White House to sign the agreement in person, Trump deferred to Bessent, who said, "We're still working on the details," but added that the parties are seeking to finish the deal around April 26.
"It's substantially what we agreed on previously. But the president was here. We had a memorandum of understanding. We went straight to the big deal," he said.
The deal was supposed to be signed when Zelenskyy visited the White House on Feb. 28, but the meeting fell apart after a rare feud developed, with Trump and Vice President JD Vance berating the Ukrainian leader and accusing him of being ungrateful for years of American support.
Lavrov's remarks followed talks in St. Petersburg between Putin and Trump's special envoy Steve Witkoff about the search for a peace deal.
