Will the minerals deal with Trump save Ukraine?

When it first came out it looked like Donald Trump just wanted to snatch all of Ukraine's so-called rare earth minerals to make up for the billions of dollars the US spent on arming Kyiv to fight off the Russians. But there is a more subtle game being played here. Trump genuinely believes that if American contractors are around in Ukraine in force to dig up all these vital materials, such as graphite, titanium, lithium and uranium, the Russians wouldn't dare to interfere, let alone breach a hoped-for ceasefire and start killing Americans. So, in other words, Ukraine's greatest security guarantee for the future, bar US troops on the ground, is to have as many Americans as possible working in Ukraine to keep Putin at bay. It would be more like an economic/industrial security guarantee. It might just work, although Zelensky is never going to be satisfied with that as his country's sole security guarantee. He still wants Ukraine to be part of Nato and to have alliance troops in Ukraine as the best deterrent for stopping any further agression from Putin. He's not going to get that, and Trump will tell him so when they meet in the White House tomorrow (Friday) But if that's the case, then Zelensky should ask Trump to make sure that every US company that comes in to extract the rare minerals should be protected by US private defence contractors. Then at least there will be armed American boots on the ground, albeit not from the Marines or the 82nd Airborne Division.