But there is precedent for Ukraine to mix security and business with the United States under Mr. Trump. In his first term, in 2017, he struck a deal for Ukraine to buy coal from Pennsylvania to replace coal from mines in Ukraine lost under Russian occupation after the 2014 invasion.
Kostiantyn Yelisieiev, a former diplomat and the deputy chief of staff under Ukraine’s president at the time the agreement was struck, recalled that the deal had allowed Mr. Trump to declare that he had saved jobs in Pennsylvania, a swing state. For Kyiv, the agreement opened the door for Mr. Trump to provide lethal military aid to Ukraine with the approval for sales of Javelin anti-tank missiles.
At the time, Ukrainian officials saw it as a success, Mr. Yelisieiev said. "It confirmed that Trump is not a person of values, but a person of interests and money,” and that Ukraine could find a way to work with him on security, he said.
But the deal under discussion now, he said, elevates the approach in ways that could hand Russia a propaganda win by casting the war as a battle for natural resources, not Ukrainian independence or democracy.
“It’s more important to say this is about protecting democracies and defeating Putin,” he said.
