News - World: The administration of US President Donald Trump has declared that it is making preparations for its first sale of military equipment to Ukraine.

The US State Department notified Congress of a proposed license for the export of military equipment to Ukraine in the amount of "$50 million or more," media reports said on Thursday.

Earlier, Ukrainian media reported that the Trump administration had notified Congress of its intention to greenlight the export of military equipment to Kiev.

This would be the first permission of its kind since Trump took office in January, although no further details have been provided on the scope of weapons sales to Kiev.

The move for US military sales came after the controversial rare minerals deal between the US and Ukraine was eventually signed on Wednesday after much turbulence.

Ukraine’s first deputy prime minister, Yulia Svyrydenko, signed the agreement in Washington on Wednesday, along with the US Treasury Secretary, Scott Bessent.

The deal was signed between the two sides in the framework of the US-Ukraine Reconstruction Investment Fund, the US Treasury Department announced on Wednesday.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelensky said on Thursday that the deal as “truly equal” and created “an opportunity for quite significant investment in Ukraine”.

A senior aide to Zelensky said Kiev hoped that US weapons deliveries to Kiev would resume swiftly.

“There is no direct link where it’s written that ‘you will receive these particular weapons’, but it opens the possibility for parallel talks on the purchase of weapons,” said Mykhailo Podolyak. “The American side is now open to these discussions.”

The deal was signed almost three months of back-and-forth negotiation, after the first outline was brought to Kiev by Bessent and rejected by Zelensky.

Signing the deal was later scheduled at the White House in February, but broke down after  Trump and Vice President JD Vance turned on Zelensky in the Oval Office, prompting an abrupt conclusion of talks and the Ukrainian president being asked to leave the White House.

Source: Press TV