President Donald Trump said on Saturday that the United States would “be able to do business with both” Russia and Ukraine once “Russia and Ukraine make a deal,” when a reporter asked him about Russia wanting to invest in Alaska natural gas, a day after The New York Times reported that a Russian gas producer had secretly funded an Alaska export venture.
“Mr. President, any thoughts on Russia wanting to investing in, uh, Alaska natural gas?” a reporter asked Trump as he took questions after voting early in Palm Beach, Florida. First lady Melania Trump was with him.
“No, but we’d like to get back to life where Russia and Ukraine make a deal and then we’d be able to do business with both,” Trump replied. Later in the same answer, after discussing his minerals agreement with Ukraine, he said: “No, I have no comment on that other than, uh, certainly we’ll do business with Ukraine and with Russia after this war ends, I would think.” The White House’s Rapid Response account posted a clip of the answer on Saturday afternoon.
The question followed a New York Times report published Friday, “In U.S. Gas Talks With Kremlin, Hidden Financing for Alaska Project Emerges,” and reporting by the Financial Times, which said that Polar LNG, a startup that wants to liquefy and export gas from Alaska’s North Slope, had received undisclosed funding from Novatek, Russia’s largest private gas producer. The Times cited the company’s former chief executive, Joel Riddle, who resigned in September and said he had been misled about the source of the startup’s funding, and reported that messages showed Novatek executives discussing as much as $15 million for the venture through an Abu Dhabi-based company, Tech Wave.
The Times also reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the Alaska proposal last month with Trump’s envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, according to people familiar with the talks, and that there was no indication either envoy knew of the funding. A U.S. official told the paper the deal was only broadly mentioned. The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday that several U.S. executives said they quit Polar LNG over the undisclosed Russian funding.
Polar LNG has denied wrongdoing. In a statement on Friday, it said its work was being pursued “in full compliance with applicable U.S. laws,” called Riddle “a disgruntled former employee” who was “terminated from the company for cause,” and said it had applied to the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control for a license to buy an unfinished gravity-based structure from Novatek. It named Tim Talkington, a former chief executive of Goldman Sachs Bank Russia, as acting CEO.
Novatek told the newspapers it was moving to become a minority shareholder in Polar LNG and had given Tech Wave the right to use its technology in Alaska, and said the project would require U.S. and Russian approval. Novatek’s Arctic LNG 2 project was placed under U.S. sanctions in November 2023, according to a Treasury Department release. The Kremlin had not commented publicly on the reports or on Trump’s remarks as of early Sunday, and no comment from Ukraine’s government was found.
Between those two statements, Trump pointed to his minerals agreement with Kyiv. “You know, I made a deal with Ukraine to get their natural — up to a trillion dollars worth of their, their natural minerals. And the reason, because Biden gave them $350 billion worth of equipment,” he said, adding that “the European Union would’ve paid.”
The agreement, signed on April 30, 2025, set up a joint investment fund that receives 50% of royalties, license fees and similar payments from new natural resource projects in Ukraine, according to a White House fact sheet. Neither that fact sheet nor the Treasury announcement assigned the deal a dollar value.
The U.S. government’s Ukraine oversight website says Congress appropriated $174.2 billion through five Ukraine supplemental spending laws from fiscal 2022 through fiscal 2024, including humanitarian money and funds for U.S. forces in Europe. It says the United States has committed more than $68.2 billion in defense articles and services to Ukraine.
Earlier in the same session with reporters, Trump said he had spoken with Elon Musk about the situation in Ukraine but declined to give details. “No, I can’t,” he said when asked to describe the conversation.
Trump’s statement that the countries will do business “after this war ends” is a forecast, and he did not say whether his administration would allow Russian investment in Alaska gas. His figures do not match the record: the oversight data show $174.2 billion in Ukraine-related appropriations, not $350 billion in equipment, and the 2025 minerals agreement sets no “trillion dollars” value. His statement that the European Union would have paid is his own assertion. The Polar LNG funding account comes from its former chief executive and documents described by the newspapers; the company disputes his account, and no federal agency has announced a finding.