THE AMERICAN demand was brutal. President Volodymyr Zelensky had hoped to present his offer to give America access to Ukraine’s rare minerals directly to Donald Trump. When America’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, turned up in Kyiv a few days ahead of this weekend’s Munich Security Conference, Mr Zelensky then hoped he’d be talking about continued financial support. Instead, the Ukrainian president unexpectedly found himself presented with a memorandum. The proposal demanded his country’s mineral wealth in its entirety. Mr Zelensky had “an hour” to agree, according to three sources with knowledge of the exchange.