“The minerals agreement is only part of the picture. We have heard multiple times from the US administration that it’s part of a bigger picture,” Olha Stefanishyna, Ukraine’s deputy prime minister and justice minister who has led the negotiations, told the Financial Times on Tuesday.

Mr. Trump has long demanded that NATO and other allies contribute more to their own defense. But the minerals agreement would represent a major escalation in his transactional approach to foreign policy. The United States was once seen as the world’s policeman, but to many analysts it now seems more like an extortionate Mafia kingpin.

Three senior Ukrainian officials say that Ukraine and the U.S. have reached an agreement on a framework for a broad economic deal that would include the exploitation of rare earth minerals