Kremlin is already building high-level team for direct talks with US on Ukraine, sources say

Kirill Dmitriev, a close Putin adviser, will focus on restoring economic ties between the US and Russia as the two sides attempt to forge a Russia-Ukraine peace agreement, according to sources with knowledge of the appointment.

Dmitriev, the head of Russia’s sanctioned sovereign wealth fund, has been an outspoken Trump supporter from within Russia’s political elite, saying his US presidential election victory “shows that ordinary Americans are tired of the unprecedented lies, incompetence, and malice of the Biden administration.” He added that Trump’s win “opens up new opportunities for resetting relations between Russia and the United States.”

Born in Soviet-era Ukraine and educated at Harvard and Stanford in the US, Dmitriev worked as consultant at US consultancy firm McKinsey and as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs.

The Kremlin’s inclusion of Dmitriev, indicates that a key focus of Russia’s negotiating strategy in likely to be on sanctions reduction, as well as on repairing battered economic ties with the West.

Dmitriev has been a prominent Russian contact point with both the first and current Trump administrations, consistently calling for closer US-Russian ties, and engaging in private back-channel talks with US officials.

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.