US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent was asked if a minerals deal between Ukraine and the US is still on the table, APA reports citing BBC.
He tells the BBC's US partner CBS it's "impossible to have an economic deal without a peace deal".
Bessent says Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has "thrown off the sequencing" of how the minerals deal and peace deal were supposed to play out, and that it's unclear if he now wants to proceed.
"President Trump's idea for this economic arrangement was to further intertwine American and Ukrainian people and to show the Russian leadership that there was no daylight," says Bessent.
He adds that Zelensky came to the Oval Office and "tried to relitigate in front of the world".
"The place to have done that would have been in the private lunch," he says.
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