 "Kirill Dmitriev is pictured at a news conference at the US-Russia summit on Ukraine in Anchorage, Alaska, in August. AFP File")
Days after President Donald Trump unveiled a fresh round of sanctions against Moscow, Russia’s top economic envoy arrived in the United States for ‘official’ talks.
According to a CNN report, citing sources familiar with the visit, Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and a special envoy for the Kremlin, is expected to meet senior Trump administration officials to “continue discussions about the US–Russia relationship.”
The visit comes amid growing US frustration over the Kremlin’s refusal to end its war in Ukraine and after Trump said he had “canceled” a planned summit with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin.
The Trump administration on Wednesday imposed sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil as it called on Moscow to agree to an immediate ceasefire in the war with Ukraine.
Putin said the sanctions will have little impact on the Russian economy, describing them as an attempt to put pressure on Moscow.
“No self-respecting country ever does anything under pressure,” CNN quoted Putin as saying on Thursday.
The Russian leader said that, in a conversation with Trump, he had warned that the sanctions would impact global oil prices, including in the US.
Dmitriev – who has been a prominent Kremlin advocate for closer economic cooperation between Russia and the United States – recently proposed the construction of a “Trump-Putin” tunnel between Alaska and the Russian Far East.
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More ShortsBorn in Soviet-era Ukraine and educated at Harvard and Stanford in the US, Dmitriev worked as a consultant at American consultancy firm McKinsey and as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs.
After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Dmitriev was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department, which designated him a “close associate of Putin” and his family.
In April, Dmitriev became the first Russian official to visit Washington, DC, since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At the time, his visit – during which he met with Trump envoy Steve Witkoff – was viewed as an important step in the then-warming relations between the Kremlin and the White House.
The US government temporarily lifted sanctions against Dmitriev to allow the State Department to grant him a visa to come to the US, a source told CNN in April.
With inputs from agencies