Europe is rushing to provide Ukraine with alternatives to Elon Musk’s Starlink broadband satellite network, after the US withdrew military aid and intelligence sharing from the country this week.

Andriy Yermak, Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, is leading the talks on the Ukrainian side. He said on Monday that he had spoken to Republican congressman Brian Fitzpatrick about finding a “path toward a just peace” and that signing the minerals deal was “crucial for both our countries”.

But Trump has given no indication he is prepared to offer assistance to ensure any agreement holds. European promises to re-arm — the president has been telling the continent to stop freeriding on US guarantees for the best part of a decade — may have come too late.

“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.

Let’s be clear, the Russian war of aggression against Ukraine is horrible. For 11 years, I have documented the war’s cost. With the full-scale invasion three years ago, my organisation established a network of human rights defenders to record mass atrocities — from the dead on the streets in Bucha to the mass graves in Izium.

Eutelsat, the owner of OneWeb, a rival to Starlink, on Tuesday said it was “actively collaborating with European institutions and business partners”, adding that it had equipment that could be “deployed swiftly in Ukraine to connect the most critical missions and infrastructures”.

Trump poised to grab Ukraine minerals on linkedin (opens in a new window)

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Keir Starmer held an online meeting with President Alar Karis of Estonia, Prime Minister Evika Siliņa of Latvia and President Gitanas Nausėda of Lithuania on Sunday morning and “underlined his focus on securing a lasting peace in Ukraine that ensures their future sovereignty, backed up by strong security guarantees”.