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Jack Posobeic, a US far-right operative known for his ties with white nationalists, neo-Nazis, and extremist outlets in the US and pro-Russian views, was a part of US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent’s delegation in Kyiv on February 12, 2025, and reported the details of Secretary Bessent’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. The message was clear: Ukraine’s security was conditional on economic concessions, and Zelenskyy was put under pressure.
Posobeic quoted the US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth who spoke at the NATO conference in Brussels the same day, suggesting that Hegseth’s “blistering” statement about the impossibility of pre-2014 borders and NATO membership for Ukraine, and the US troops in Ukraine led Zelenskyy “potentially to not sign the deal.”
According to Posobeic, Secretary Bessent handed a copy of the mineral deal to President Zelenskyy who said that “he wanted a security guarantee, a de facto NATO membership” which was not a part of the deal. Zelenskyy insisted on meeting with President Trump while Secretary Bessent “urged him to sign the deal.”
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“President Zelenskyy did not [sign the deal] but said that he would revisit it potentially when he meets with Vice President JD Vance in Munich on Friday,” said Posobeic. “This is a very critical point… because then, just as we were walking out of the presidential complex, the Presidential Palace there in Kyiv that’s when President Trump almost to the very minute posted on his True Social, saying [that] while we had been inside and the Secretary was there meeting with Zelenskyy and holding a press conference, President Trump had spent the entire same hour on the phone with Vladimir Putin.
“So he gave Zelenskyy the opportunity to sign the deal first. Zelenskyy didn’t sign the deal right away. That’s when President Trump posted on Truth Social… Then, Zelenskyy immediately hopped on the phone and said, ‘Let me call Trump, let me call Trump, let me call the President.”
By speaking at the NATO meeting in Brussels before Bessent’s visit, US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth increased pressure on Ukraine, while Trump’s phone call with Putin signalled that key decisions were made without Ukraine, further isolating Zelenskyy. Trump’s mid-meeting post on Truth Social turned the negotiation into a public spectacle, intensifying pressure on Ukraine’s leadership to sign the rare mineral deal. The U.S. security guarantees under the Budapest Memorandum were not mentioned.
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