The timely intervention of Russian financier Kirill Dmitriev has been crucial to US President Donald Trump’s latest diplomatic efforts to achieve a breakthrough to end the Ukraine conflict.
After Trump’s attempts to persuade Russian President Vladimir Putin to take his various peace initiatives seriously, it appeared that the prospects of reaching a peaceful resolution of the conflict were remote. Putin’s refusal to make any meaningful compromises led Trump to cancel his planned summit with the Russian leader in Budapest and to impose a new range of secondary sanctions that could inflict even greater damage on the Russian economy.
It was at this point that Kirill Dmitriev, the Harvard-educated head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund and a close ally of Putin, intervened in a bid to revive the peace talks and prevent his country from suffering further economic hardship.
Shortly after Trump announced in late October that he was cancelling the Budapest summit, Dmitriev flew to Florida, where he met with Steve Witkoff, the president’s special envoy who has been heavily involved in negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
Even though neither Dmitriev nor Witkoff have much experience of high-end diplomacy, they nevertheless managed to draft a 28-point peace plan which, while heavily weighted in Moscow’s favour, has provided a fresh boost to efforts to implement a lasting ceasefire.
The announcement of Trump’s latest peace initiative, which grants Russia control over large areas of eastern Ukraine and thwarts Kyiv’s ambition to join NATO, has breathed new life into a process that appeared to be running into the sand.
And while there are still no guarantees that both sides can be persuaded to sign up to a lasting peace deal, with Putin resisting Ukrainian attempts to amend the terms of the original 28-point proposal, it is clear that, without Dmitriev’s last-minute intervention, the entire diplomatic process would still be languishing in stalemate.
Dmitriev’s emergence as a key player in the diplomatic dance to end the conflict is all the more surprising given that the 50-year-old Harvard graduate was originally born in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv during the Soviet era, and more recently has been subjected to US sanctions because of his close personal ties to Putin, who appointed him to head the Russia Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), the formal title of the country’s sovereign wealth fund.
Special Trump access
The first indication of Dmitriev’s special access to the Trump administration emerged in April, when, despite being officially blacklisted by the US, he travelled to Washington to lobby against Russia being targeted by Trump’s imposition of global tariffs. After the US Treasury agreed to temporarily suspend sanctions imposed against Dmitriev, the Russian had a lengthy meeting with Witkoff in Washington that resulted in Moscow avoiding the brunt of Trump’s sanctions regime. Dmitriev’s success on that occasion both illustrated his close ties with the Trump administration and the trust Putin placed in him to negotiate on his behalf to protect Russia’s economic interests.
Interviewed on CNN after his meeting with Witkoff, Dmitriev said his main aim was to restore trade ties between Washington and Moscow. “If America wants to have more business with Russia...then of course the US can do so,” Dmitriev told CNN on Thursday, adding in a separate interview with Russian state media that one of the “main topics” he had discussed with Witkoff was “the restoration of Russian-American relations”.
It is now clear that this successful mission laid the foundations for his latest effort to secure the Trump administration's agreement to a new set of peace proposals for Ukraine.
Central role
Another example of the central role Dmitriev plays in representing Putin’s interests came when American and Russian officials held their first, tentative talks on a range of issues, including the Ukraine conflict, in Saudi Arabia. Dmitriev even found time for an informal one-on-one meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman.
The success of the meeting with the American visitors was reflected in comments he later posted on X, posting, “Russia is open for US-Russia economic cooperation and believes such cooperation is key for a more resilient global economy.”
The prospect of developing lucrative trade ties between the US and Russia is thought to be one of the driving motivations behind Trump’s attempts to forge a peace deal in Ukraine, which would enable Washington to lift economic sanctions imposed against the Kremlin.
