Russia says rare earth metal talks with the US have begun – report
Washington and Moscow have begun discussions on projects related to Russian rare earth metals, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev, has said.
“Rare earth metals are an important area of cooperation and, of course, we have started discussions on various rare earth metals and projects in Russia,” he told pro-Kremlin Russian newspaper Izvestia.
Dmitriev, who was part of Russia’s negotiating team at talks with US officials in Saudi Arabia in February, also said some companies have already expressed interest in the projects, without going into more detail.
Izvestia reported the cooperation may be further discussed at the next round of Russia-US talks that may take place in a couple of weeks in Saudi Arabia.
In February, Vladimir Putin suggested that the US might be interested in exploring joint exploration for rare earth metals deposits in Russia, which has the world’s fifth-largest reserves of the metals used in lasers and military equipment.
Donald Trump said on Thursday the US would sign a minerals and natural resources deal with Ukraine soon. Kyiv seems to have little choice but to sign a deal if it wants US military support to continue.
Trump has claimed any such deal would allow the US to recoup hundreds of billions of dollars it spent on military aid to Kyiv. Ukraine wants the deal to include references to long-term US security guarantees to protect it from Russian attacks after the war is over.
But the specifics are still being negotiated and the US has so far signalled that it will not provide significant security guarantees to Ukraine as part of the agreement. You can read more about what rare earth minerals are and why Trump wants access to them in this useful explainer.
Key events
Volodymyr Zelenskyy has marked the third anniversary of the Ukrainian army retaking Bucha, which was seized by Russia soon after Vladimir Putin ordered a full-scale invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022.
Ukrainian forces took back control of the small towns of Bucha and Irpin to the northwest of Kyiv in late March in 2022 as Russian soldiers quickly abandoned their attempt to seize the capital Kyiv.
As Russian troops withdrew from Bucha, the scale of the destruction and horror there became clear.
Witnesses of alleged atrocities in Bucha told the Guardian that Russian soldiers had fired on men fleeing the town, and had killed civilians at will.
Kyiv says more than 1,400 people were killed in Bucha during the occupation including 37 children, more than 175 people were found in mass graves and torture chambers, and at least 9,000 Russian war crimes have been identified.
Moscow denies accusations of executions, rapes and torture by its occupying troops who left bodies in the streets when they fled.
Paying tribute to Ukrainians who have been killed in the war and expressing gratitude to Ukrainian soldiers still fighting to defend their country, Zelenskyy wrote in a post on X on Monday:
And the world saw what the Russian occupation truly is: people killed in the streets, people tortured, graves in the yards of ordinary houses.
Since then, no one in the world can say they do not know what Ukraine is defending.
Three years ago, our warriors liberated Bucha from the Russian occupiers. And the world saw what the Russian occupation truly is: people killed in the streets, people tortured, graves in the yards of ordinary houses.
Since then, no one in the world can say they do not know what… pic.twitter.com/4mzgpzxSlz
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) March 31, 2025
Netherlands’ defence ministry pledges over $2bn for Ukraine in 2025
In an earlier post, we reported that Sweden announced a fresh military aid package to Kyiv worth about 16 billion kronor ($1.5bn; £1.2bn).
Now, Dutch defence minister Ruben Brekelmans and defence secretary Gijs Tuinman have announced the Netherlands will allocate €2bn ($2.2bn; £1.7bn) to support Kyiv this year.
The security assistance will include support for Ukraine’s Drone Line project, a military initiative that will broaden the use of drones within elite units of the ground forces and the state border guard service.
Unveiling details of the project in a Facebook post last month, Ukrainian defence minister Rustem Umerov wrote:
We are launching a revolutionary project that will radically strengthen our brigades and scale the experience of effectively destroying the enemy – the Drone Line.
This is a new standard of warfare, where unmanned systems are becoming a key element of combat operations, helping our defenders perform the most difficult tasks.
We are focusing on the best UAV units. The Drone Line will scale the most effective unmanned systems in the land forces and the state border guard service.
“These drones will make a difference on the battlefield and literally save lives,” Brekelmans said in a statement on Monday.
The Netherlands has been a staunch ally to Ukraine since Russia’s full-scale invasion three years ago, reportedly providing Kyiv with about €7.33bn ($7.87bn) in support to date.
In a video posted to X ahead of the Madrid meeting, Kaja Kallas said today marks three weeks since Ukraine agreed to a ceasefire but “Russia is playing games and not really wanting peace”.
The Madrid meeting will also discuss European defence more generally as, she said, “all kinds of threats are coming our way”.
Europe’s top diplomat, Kaja Kallas, has urged Russia to show goodwill and agree on a ceasefire in Ukraine.
On Monday, the EU’s high representative for foreign affair said “giving back Ukrainian children that have been deported to Russia” and “releasing prisoners of war” were examples of gestures Russia could make to show goodwill.
Speaking before a meeting of European foreign ministers in Madrid to discuss the war in Ukraine, she also called on the US to apply pressure on the Kremlin to put an end to the three-year-old conflict.
Meanwhile, the French foreign minister, Jean-Noel Barrot, said Russia owed a clear response to the US on whether it wants to go on a peace path at all amid Donald Trump’s comments that he was “very angry” with Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
Sweden donates major aid package to Ukraine
Sweden will donate 16bn kronor ($1.6bn, £1.24bn, €1.48bn) in fresh military aid to Ukraine, the government said on Monday – the largest such package from the Nordic country since Russia’s 2022 invasion.
Swedish Defence Minister Pal Jonson told reporters that Sweden wanted “to send the message now that we are both intensifying our support and increasing its strength and scope”.
“There are strong reasons to do so in light of the seriousness of the situation in Ukraine,” Jonson added.
The majority of the aid package, 9bn kronor, would go towards the acquisition of newly produced materials, “mainly from the Swedish, but also the European defence industrial base.”
The materials would be selected judged by “Ukrainian needs,” the government said.
The latest package is the 19th tranche of military aid that Sweden has provided to Ukraine, with the total estimated at 80 billion kronor, according to the government.
Here are some fuller comments from Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov, as carried by BBC News:
We continue to work with the American side, primarily on sorting out our bilaterial relations, which had been greatly damaged by the previous [US] administration. And we are also working on several areas regarding the Ukraine peace process.
Work is ongoing. We have nothing concrete yet that we could or should tell you. This process is drawn out due to its complicated nature. The President remains open to contact with President Trump. A telephone call can be organised quickly if needed.
Kremlin says Putin ‘remains open’ to speaking to Trump (again)
Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov has been talking to journalists in his regular daily media briefing. He has been asked about Donald Trump saying he was “very angry” with Vladimir Putin over his approach to a ceasefire in Ukraine (see opening post for more details on this).
“This process is time-consuming, probably due to the fact of the complexity of the substance. The president remains open to contact with President Trump,” Peskov said, adding that “there is no scheduled” phone call between the leaders, but that “when it is necessary, their conversation will be promptly organised”.
There have so far been two announced phone calls between Putin and Trump this year – on 12 February and on 18 March – though there has been speculation about much more frequent contact, and also reports that they spoke before Trump was elected last year.
Peskov also confirmed that Putin is expected to meet China’s foreign minister, Wang Yi, during his visit to Moscow this week.
Two people were killed and 25 were injured in and around Ukraine’s second city, Kharkiv, in Russian attacks on Saturday night and Sunday morning, according to officials.
Overnight, Russia carried out more air strikes on Ukraine’s second-largest city, with two people reportedly being injured in the latest attack. Here are some of the latest images taken in the aftermath of the strikes:
Russia has accused Ukraine’s army of attacking energy sites in the Bryansk border region in a drone and artillery strike on Sunday evening.
“The continuation of deliberate attacks by the Ukrainian army on Russia’s energy facilities is evidence of the Kyiv regime’s complete lack of commitment to its obligations regarding settling the conflict in Ukraine,” the Russian defence ministry said.
Russian president Vladimir Putin and his Ukrainian counterpart Volodymyr Zelenskyy have agreed to a partial, loosely defined ceasefire covering energy and civilian infrastructure – but both Moscow and Kyiv have accused the other of violating the agreement.
Trump ‘running out of patience’ with Putin over Ukraine ceasefire, says Finnish president
Patrick Wintour
Patrick Wintour is diplomatic editor for the Guardian
Donald Trump is losing patience with Vladimir Putin’s stalling tactics over the Ukraine ceasefire, the Finnish president, Alexander Stubb, said after spending several hours with the US president – including winning a golf competition with him at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida on Saturday.
Stubb, who also spent two days with the Ukrainian president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, last week in Helsinki suggested in a Guardian interview a plan for a deadline of 20 April, by which time Putin should be required to comply with a full ceasefire.
Stubb pointed out that a third golf partner on Saturday, the Republican senator Lindsey Graham, already has a bill in the US Senate proposing what he has described as “bone-breaking” US sanctions on Russia if it did not accept an unconditional ceasefire.
The round of golf diplomacy seemed to make a positive impression on Trump, who wrote afterwards on his Truth Social platform: “I just played a round of Golf with Alexander Stubb, President of Finland. He is a very good player, and we won the Men’s Member-Guest Golf Tournament at Trump International Golf Club in Palm Beach County…
“President Stubb and I look forward to strengthening the partnership between the United States and Finland, and that includes the purchase and development of a large number of badly needed Icebreakers for the U.S., delivering Peace and International Security for our Countries, and the World.”
Asked how he thought Trump would express his impatience with Putin, Stubb said things would be clear in a matter of days. “When you spend seven hours with someone, you at least get an intuition of the direction in which we’re going,” he said.
You can read the full story here:
Russia says rare earth metal talks with the US have begun – report
Washington and Moscow have begun discussions on projects related to Russian rare earth metals, the head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev, has said.
“Rare earth metals are an important area of cooperation and, of course, we have started discussions on various rare earth metals and projects in Russia,” he told pro-Kremlin Russian newspaper Izvestia.
Dmitriev, who was part of Russia’s negotiating team at talks with US officials in Saudi Arabia in February, also said some companies have already expressed interest in the projects, without going into more detail.
Izvestia reported the cooperation may be further discussed at the next round of Russia-US talks that may take place in a couple of weeks in Saudi Arabia.
In February, Vladimir Putin suggested that the US might be interested in exploring joint exploration for rare earth metals deposits in Russia, which has the world’s fifth-largest reserves of the metals used in lasers and military equipment.
Donald Trump said on Thursday the US would sign a minerals and natural resources deal with Ukraine soon. Kyiv seems to have little choice but to sign a deal if it wants US military support to continue.
Trump has claimed any such deal would allow the US to recoup hundreds of billions of dollars it spent on military aid to Kyiv. Ukraine wants the deal to include references to long-term US security guarantees to protect it from Russian attacks after the war is over.
But the specifics are still being negotiated and the US has so far signalled that it will not provide significant security guarantees to Ukraine as part of the agreement. You can read more about what rare earth minerals are and why Trump wants access to them in this useful explainer.
In a post on X, Ukraine’s prime minister, Denys Shmyhal, said that his country’s state budget received around $400m (€369m; £309m) from the International Monetary Fund (IMF) after the successful seventh review of the Extended Fund Facility (EFF) arrangement.
The total IMF support under this program amounts to over $10bn, he said. The EFF funds are meant to help stabilise the Ukrainian economy during the war, aid its postwar recovery and promote economic growth as the country edges closer towards potential EU membership.
What did Putin say to make Trump so angry at him?
Let’s take a closer look at what Putin said that prompted Trump to say he was “very angry” at him.
Speaking in the northwestern Russian city of Murmansk on Friday, Putin had suggested the establishment of an interim government in Ukraine under UN supervision, which would be in place “in order to hold a democratic election (in Ukraine), in order to bring in a competent government trusted by people”.
By “competent government” he means one not led by Volodymyr Zelenskyy, the current Ukrainian president. Ukrainian law does not allow elections under martial law, which was declared when Russia launched its full-scale invasion in February 2022.
Putin went on to say that Moscow would then hold so-called peace talks with the new government, which he said would result in “legitimate documents” being signed that would be “recognised worldwide” as “reliable and stable”.
He said “such practice does exist”, citing examples of the UN’s involvement in countries such as East Timor, which the UN took over the administration of and oversaw the territory’s transition to independence.
Putin was quoted by the Tass news agency as having said:
Such practice does exist and, technically, it is possible to discuss the possibility of introducing interim governance in Ukraine under the UN auspices with the United States, with European countries, naturally, with our partners and friends.
In order to hold a democratic election there, in order to bring in a competent government trusted by people.
And then hold talks with it about a peace treaty and sign legitimate documents which would be recognized worldwide and be reliable and stable.
The Guardian’s defence and security editor, Dan Sabbagh, has this snippet about the ineffectiveness of Trump’s negotiating tactics in regards to trying to end the war in Ukraine. You can read the full story here.
During the election campaign, Trump had said that he could end the Ukraine war within 24 hours, comments he more recently claimed were “a little bit sarcastic”.
That has proved elusive and his tactics to force Russia and Ukraine into agreeing a ceasefire have so far been focused on bullying and pressurising Kyiv.
Trump and his vice-president, JD Vance, berated Zelenskyy at the Oval Office a month ago, which was followed by Washington cutting off intelligence and military aid.
Kyiv then signed up to the principle of a 30-day ceasefire if the Kremlin would reciprocate in return for intelligence and aid being restored.
Putin said earlier this month that although he was in favour of a ceasefire, “there are nuances” and any halt in fighting should “remove the root causes of this crisis”, a sweeping but vague demand.
The Russian president and his allies have called for the demilitarisation of Ukraine, insisted that the presence of western troops as peacekeepers would be unacceptable and demanded the full annexation of four regions, three of which it only partially occupies.
Trump says he is ‘pissed off’ with Putin’s approach to ceasefire as strikes on Ukraine continue
Welcome back to our live coverage of Russia’s war on Ukraine. We are leading today’s blog with Donald Trump saying he was “very angry” and “pissed off” over Vladimir Putin’s approach to a ceasefire in Ukraine, in comments that mark a huge shift in tone in the way the US president usually speaks about the Russian leader.
Trump also took aim at the Russian president’s criticism of Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s credibility, despite the US President having previously called his Ukrainian counterpart a “dictator”.
Putin recently said that Zelenskyy – who was democratically elected in 2019 – lacks the legitimacy to sign a peace deal and suggested that Ukraine needed external governance.
Trump, who is eager for Kyiv and Moscow to swiftly agree to a broad ceasefire deal, indicated he would levy a 25% or 50% tariff that would affect countries buying Russian oil in a telephone interview with NBC News.
“If Russia and I are unable to make a deal on stopping the bloodshed in Ukraine, and if I think it was Russia’s fault, which it might not be, but if I think it was Russia’s fault, I am going to put secondary tariffs on oil, on all oil coming out of Russia,” Trump said.
“That would be that if you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do business in the United States. There will be a 25% tariff on all … on all oil, a 25 to 50-point tariff on all oil.”
Trump continued: “I was very angry, pissed off” when Putin “started getting into Zelenskyy’s credibility, because that’s not going in the right location, you understand?”
He said “new leadership means you’re not gonna have a deal for a long time, right” and that he wanted to exert pressure on the Kremlin, which has only agreed to limited maritime and energy ceasefires so far.
Seemingly responding to Trump’s comments, Zelenskyy said in his Sunday night address that Putin “does not care about diplomacy”, adding that attacks have continued to attack his country despite ceasefire proposals (being suggested by Washington over recent weeks).
“For several weeks now, there has been a US proposal for an unconditional ceasefire. And almost every day, in response to this proposal, there are Russian drones, bombs, artillery shelling and ballistic strikes,” the Ukrainian president said.
“Russia deserves increased pressure – all the tough measures that can break its capacity to wage war and sustain the system that wants nothing but war,” Zelensky added.
In some other developments:
-
Donald Trump said Volodymyr Zelenskyy wants to back out of a critical minerals deal, which would grant the US access to Ukraine’s rare mineral reserves.
“He’s trying to back out of the rare earth deal and if he does that he’s got some problems, big, big problems,” Trump told reporters yesterday.
“He wants to be a member of Nato, but he’s never going to be a member of Nato. He understands that.” -
Russia bombed the city of Kharkiv in north-eastern Ukraine for the second night in a row, injuring two people, sparking fires and damaging a kindergarten and private houses, Ukrainian officials said early on Monday. The attacks lasted most of the night, said Kharkiv’s mayor, Ihor Terekhov. Zelenskyy on Sunday said Moscow had fired more than 1,000 drones in the past week and called for a response from the US and other allies.
-
Russia’s defence ministry claimed on Sunday that its forces had gained control over Zaporizhzhia settlement in Ukraine’s Donetsk region. The village is unrelated to the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, which is in another region. The Russian claim was reported by Reuters, which said it was not able to verify it. The village is 7km from the border of Ukraine’s central Dnipropetrovsk region. The Donetsk region borders Dnipropetrovsk to the east.
-
The Ukrainian air force said Russia launched 131 drones and two ballistic missiles during overnight attacks, 57 of which were shot down and another 45 drones did not reach their targets, likely due to electronic countermeasures. The military did not specify what happened to the remaining 29 drones.
-
Russia’s air defence units intercepted and destroyed 66 Ukrainian drones overnight, the Russian defence ministry said this morning. 41 of the drones were destroyed over the border Bryansk region, 24 over the Kaluga region and one over the Kursk region. There were no immediate reports of any casualties.
