Ukraine Verkhovna Rada ratifies US-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund Agreement (draft law 0309) and amends Budget Code (draft law 13256) to channel half of new-licence subsoil royalties and PSA revenues into the joint fund

Mechanism

Two-instrument package. The first instrument is draft law 0309, a short ratification statute giving the 30 April 2025 Washington intergovernmental agreement the force of Ukrainian law; the Rada passed it on 8 May 2025 with 338 of 450 MPs in favour, and President Zelenskyy signed the ratification law on 12 May 2025, completing the Ukrainian side of treaty entry-into-force.

The second instrument is draft law 13256, a set of amendments to the Budget Code of Ukraine that operationalises the Fund's revenue plumbing. Per the Budget Committee press notice and subsequent reporting, the amendments:

• create a State Budget special fund dedicated to transfers to the

joint US-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund;

• credit to that special fund 50% of royalties from new licences

for the extraction of minerals of national importance (as listed in the strategic-minerals annex of Cabinet Resolution 845 of 14 July 2025) issued after the Agreement's entry into force;

• credit 50% of the state share of production-sharing-agreement

revenues from new PSAs concluded after entry into force (including oil and gas), with the Ukrainian state retaining the other half;

• explicitly ring-fence pre-existing licences and pre-existing PSAs

— legacy production by DTEK, Naftogaz, Ferrexpo and others is not affected.

The Fund itself is structured as a 50/50 joint entity. On the US side the controlling counterparty is the US International Development Finance Corporation (DFC); on the Ukrainian side a state holding entity. The Fund's first-look right gives US co-investors right of first refusal on new lithium, titanium, REE, graphite, uranium and oil-and-gas projects above a size threshold.

Why this matters / severity

Severity 5 is justified on three structural grounds:

1. Sovereignty-grade legal instrument. This is not an MOU or a framework — it is a ratified intergovernmental treaty plus a Budget Code amendment. The 50/50 royalty assignment is a statutory fiscal claim on future Ukrainian subsoil rents, not a discretionary commitment.

2. Anchor of the post-2024 US critical-minerals architecture. The 2025 wave of US bilateral critical-minerals MOUs (Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, Australia, Pakistan, Uzbekistan) all operate downstream of the same strategic premise — diversify lithium / REE / titanium / graphite supply away from China. The Ukraine instrument is the only one in that wave that is (a) a treaty rather than an MOU, (b) backed by a sovereign-fund cash-flow mechanism, and (c) tied to a live war economy where the US is also the principal security guarantor.

3. Structural counterparty for all subsequent UA subsoil policy. The 2025-07-14 Cabinet Resolution 845 strategic-minerals lists, all subsequent UA licence rounds, and the 13256 Budget Code mechanism are now downstream of this Agreement. Future Ukrainian industrial-policy decisions in the minerals and reconstruction space inherit US co-determination.

Downstream implications

• Every new Ukrainian subsoil licence issued after Q3 2025 carries an

implicit 50% royalty haircut that flows to a US-co-managed fund; bidders must price that into project economics.

• DFC becomes a structurally large equity / debt counterparty in the

CEE / Black Sea region, beyond its traditional emerging-markets mandate.

• The Fund is the first time a US administration has codified

preferential access to a foreign sovereign's critical-minerals pipeline by treaty rather than by company-to-company offtake.

• Likely to be cited as a template in subsequent US critical-minerals

instruments with reconstruction-economy partners (e.g. potential post-conflict Gaza, Syria, Sudan structures).

• Russian and Chinese diplomatic responses treat this as a de-facto

US security stake in Ukrainian territory, complicating any future US-RU negotiation framework.

Open questions

• Specific ratification-law number on the official portal

zakon.rada.gov.ua — the search confirmed draft 0309 was the ratification draft and 13256 was the Budget Code amendments draft, but the consolidated law numbers issued upon presidential signature were not captured in the open press; a follow-up wake should fill this in if/when zakon.rada surfaces the official law numbers.

• Whether amendments to the Budget Code mechanism are made in the

2026 State Budget law (the 50% share is statutory but the operational transfer cadence is set by annual budget legislation).

• DFC governance disclosure on the Fund's investment committee

composition and approval thresholds — Carnegie's six-month assessment flags this as the principal transparency gap.