KYIV (Reuters) – Ukraine and the United States are conducting in -depth discussions for an agreement involving American investment in the production of Ukrainian drones, Prime Minister Ioulia Svyrydenko said on Friday.
On Thursday, Ukrainian President Volodimir Zelensky entrusted the mission to the new government to develop the Ukrainian arms industry and strengthen links with its strategic partners.
Ioulia Svyrydenko, who addressed journalists alongside several other new ministers in Kyiv, said that the envisaged agreement would allow the United States, the main military support of Ukraine in his war against Russia, to buy Ukrainian drones.
“We are planning to sign a ‘drone agreement’ with the United States. We are discussing investments in the United States in the expansion of the production of Ukrainian drones,” she said.
“In other words, we are talking about the purchase of a large number of Ukrainian drones.”
Ioulia Svyrydenko added that a political decision had been taken by Volodimir Zelensky and US President Donald Trump and that officials were already working on the details of an agreement.
The Ukrainian President told the New York Post this week that he was considering with Donald Trump an agreement for Washington to buy Ukrainian drones tested on the battlefield in exchange for Kyiv’s purchase of arms from the United States.
The Ukrainian government led by Ioulia Svyrydenko is expected to strengthen its links with the Trump administration, which is increasingly critical of Russia since Moscow intensified its air strikes against Ukraine.
Ioulia Svyrydenko is well known in Washington, where she has negotiated an agreement giving the United States preferential access to Ukraine mineral resources which will feed a reconstruction fund.
The Minister of Economy, Oleksi Sobolev, told Kyiv on Friday that the board of directors of an American-Ukrainian fund would meet for the first time by the end of the summer.
(Report Olena Harmash and Yuliia Dysa, written by Dan Peleschuk, Benjamin Mallet, edited by Sophie Louet)
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