A senior Russian envoy of Vladimir Putin is meeting White House officials as the US attempts to freeze the war triggered by Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine and rebuild ties with the Kremlin.
Kirill Dmitriev, chief executive of the Kremlin’s sovereign wealth fund, said on Thursday he had travelled to Washington for two days of meetings on the orders of the Russian president.
Mr Dmitriev, recently appointed a special envoy for investment, is the highest-ranking Russian official to have visited the US since Mr Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The Kremlin and Mr Dmitriev did not provide details of who was involved in the meetings or what they were discussing.
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Mr Dmitriev said “restoring dialogue is a difficult and gradual process”, but added that “real understanding of the Russian position opens new possibilities for constructive co-operation, including in investment and economics”.
Reuters reported on Wednesday that Mr Dmitriev had been invited to the White House by Steve Witkoff, US president Donald Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East. The US temporarily lifted sanctions on Mr Dmitriev to enable the visit, it added.
“There are many forces in many countries of the world that are interested in maintaining tensions and blocking restoring constructive co-operation,” Mr Dmitriev wrote on social media app Telegram.
“The enemies of rapprochement fear that Russia and the US may find areas of common interest, start to understand each other better, and build co-operation in both international affairs and the economy,” he added.
A graduate of Harvard and Stanford, Mr Dmitriev helped lay the groundwork for Mr Trump’s drive at rapprochement with Russia when he met Mr Witkoff earlier this year and attended negotiations with the US in Saudi Arabia.
The US and Russia have since discussed normalising their relations and deepening their economic ties, which Mr Dmitriev has said could include rare earth metals, Arctic co-operation, and space exploration with Elon Musk.
The US drive to end the war in Ukraine has since slowed, however, over the hard line Mr Putin has taken on Mr Trump’s push for an unconditional 30-day ceasefire.
Mr Trump has issued mixed signals over how the US will react if Mr Putin does not drop his maximalist demands, which would in effect end Ukraine’s existence as a functioning state and demolish the post-cold war security order in Europe.
The US president said on Sunday that he was “p***ed off” with Mr Putin for dragging out negotiations and threatened secondary sanctions against Russia’s oil exports if no deal was agreed.
On Wednesday, however, Russia was one of the few countries notably absent from so-called “reciprocal” tariffs Mr Trump introduced against US imports, which impacted even remote uninhabited territories like the Heard and McDonald islands near Antarctica.
US officials said Russia had been left off the list because of the existing sanctions regime against Moscow.
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