Kirill Dmitriev attends a meeting in the Kremlin, 25 January 2025. Photo: Kremlin
Senior Putin adviser Kirill Dmitriev, who also manages Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, has confirmed that he met “key members” of the Trump administration during a trip to Washington this week in a Telegram post he published on Friday.
Describing the main topic of his meetings over the past two days as “the restoration of dialogue between Moscow and Washington”, Dmitriev, who was also part of the Russian delegation for talks with the US in Riyadh in February, said that the Trump administration had demonstrated its willingness to “overcome differences and resolve the most important geopolitical issues”.
Comparing the Trump administration favourably with that of former US president Joe Biden in comments to Russian news agency TASS, Dmitriev said that the new administration was able to “hear the Russian position and understand its concerns”.
Also on the agenda were the restoration of direct flights between the two countries, cooperation in the Arctic, the exploitation of rare earth metals and the possible recommencement of US investment in Russia, Dmitriev said.
“We see how much American companies want to return to Russia … and that many American businesses want to fill the gap left by European companies,” Dmitriev added, indicating that the Russian government would support joint ventures with the US that they deemed to be mutually beneficial.
A next round of talks between Moscow and Washington would be scheduled “in the near future”, Dmitriev said, citing the “positive dynamic” and “can-do attitude” evident in meetings this week, the first visit by a high-ranking Russian official to the United States since the war in Ukraine began three years ago.
Despite Dmitriev’s positive assessment of his visit, however, Putin’s apparent lack of urgency to negotiate an end to the war in Ukraine has become a growing source of frustration for the White House this week, and on Thursday Bloomberg reported that the US was planning to wait for Dmitriev to brief Putin on his discussions in Washington before it made any further efforts to broker a ceasefire agreement.
