Is Trump the new Don of the Donbas?

History likes its twists. In February 2023, we posited that Russian President Vladmir Putin was intent on becoming the Don of the Donbas.

Fast forward to today, and Putin has competition. President Trump is making his own play to become Don of the Donbas’s vast rare earth minerals — wealth that is estimated to be worth more than $5.75 trillion.

On Wednesday, news broke that Ukraine had agreed to a rare earth minerals deal with the White House. According to a report in the Financial Times, the agreement will establish a reconstruction fund for Ukraine, and 50 percent of the profits will go toward repaying the U.S. contribution to the war effort.

Security agreements for Ukraine are only obliquely referenced. However, Ukrainian Prime Minister Denys Shmyhal said, “This agreement is directly tied to security guarantees. Neither the President of Ukraine nor the Ukrainian government will consider or sign this agreement separately from Ukraine's security guarantee.”

If so, then we are not in Kansas anymore. Trump’s global approach to defending democracy is radically different from past administrations. It is becoming transactional — a "what’s-in-it-for-me" foreign policy.

The U.S., seemingly, is in the business of franchising democracy, and it is now charging franchise fees to allies.

Self-interest, in this case Trump’s America First agenda, has become the driving force. The U.S. is no longer a "reluctant sheriff," but rather a loan shark or hired hand — a mercenary power.

In essence, the White House made Zelensky an "offer he couldn't refuse," as Michael Corleone once put it. The Ukrainian President is reportedly scheduled to come to Washington tomorrow to sign the mineral resources deal.

If it is indeed signed, Trump will find himself in a head-to-head competition for who will be the Don of the Donbas. Washington is devolving into a mafioso world, and this deal is the equivalent of Ukraine paying protection money.

Zelensky is under immense pressure to take the deal now. Ukraine’s cities are being bombed daily. Its front lines are under relentless Russian high-casualty human-wave assaults. His pleas for Trump to do the right thing fell on unsympathetic ears. So he will pay for protection, even if the original "deal" was one of outright grants from the Biden administration.

Whereas Putin views the oligarchs as his capos, Trump appears to view European leaders as his own. During a joint press conference on Monday, Trump told reporters that, “Europe is loaning the money to Ukraine. They get their money back.”

French President Emmanuel Macron, however, was unwilling to kiss his would-be Godfather’s ring. He quickly corrected Trump, noting, “No. In fact, to be frank, we paid 60 percent of the total effort, and it was through, like the U.S., loans, guarantees, and grants. We provided real money, to be clear.”

Macron also said he supports the “idea of Ukraine first being compensated, because they are the ones to have [lost] a lot of their fellow citizens and being destroyed by these attacks.” Pointedly, the French president added, “all of those will be repaid for, but not by Ukraine, by Russia, because they were the ones to aggress.”

The European Union currently is sitting on €230 billion of Russian frozen assets, which Macron expects will be used to rebuild Ukraine.

Notably, the purported bilateral agreement does not reference Russia paying for the reconstruction of the damage it has caused in Ukraine, nor for the war crimes and crimes against humanity that Putin’s forces have inflicted upon Ukrainians.

Yet there was progress. In the preamble, the U.S. acknowledges “Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.” In recent days, Trump officials were unwilling even to admit that Putin had illegally invaded.

Under the terms of the agreement, “Ukraine will contribute to the Fund 50 percent of all revenues earned from the future monetization of all relevant Ukrainian government-owned natural resource assets.”

The fund will be jointly owned by the U.S. and Ukraine. The use of the co-managed funds “will be reinvested at least annually in Ukraine to promote the safety, security and prosperity of Ukraine.”

In exchange, Trump claimed that “Ukraine would receive $350 billion, military equipment, and the right to keep fighting under the agreement.” As Politico observed, “the deal does not mention the $500 billion figure Trump had originally demanded.

Missing in the fine print is the end-state of this war — not just in terms of ending the fighting, but of who controls what territory. The assumption is that Ukraine retains the Donbas region, since that is where half of the rare earth minerals are located.

But what about the other 50 percent of the revenues from Ukrainian natural resources. Is that to Ukraine’s discretion on how they spend it? Other contributing countries may want a piece of the pie as well.

Notably, Andrej Danko, the leader of the Slovak National Party, following Trump’s lead, suggests Ukraine should pay back Slovakia for the $3.5 billion they provided. Hungary’s Viktor Orbán may not be far behind.

Plus, for how many years will Ukraine be expected to fund the account? Who will build the mines? When would the raw materials be extracted from the ground? Who will secure the U.S. investment? Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has repeatedly stated that the U.S. would not put "boots on the ground."

The elephant in the room, of course, is that Russian is still waging war against Ukraine. Moscow, while initially euphoric about Trump’s about-face and repeated attacks on Zelensky, now appears to be perturbed by this new development. On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Secretary Sergey Lavrov pushed back, accusing Europe of meddling in peace talks. He claimed that Russia would not allow European peacekeepers in Ukraine and that Ukraine's military must be dissolved.

Most notably, however, Lavrov was quoted as saying, “There will be no cessation of the war in Ukraine along the contact line.” The way to move Putin off that negotiating point will be to give him a kinetic punch in the face. (We explained how on Tuesday.)

Is Trump, as the would-be Don of the Donbas, willing to fight for his turf? If so, Ukraine is more than willing to fight that fight for him to regain all of its territory, if properly kitted and backed by Washington and NATO.

Col. (Ret.) Jonathan Sweet served 30 years as an Army intelligence officer. Mark Toth writes on national security and foreign policy.

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