CNN: Putin's envoy Dmitriev arrives in US two days after sanctions

Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund and envoy of Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, visited the United States for "official" talks a few days after US President Donald Trump imposed sanctions on Moscow. This was reported by CNN with reference to unnamed interlocutors familiar with the matter.

He is expected to meet with representatives of the Trump administration "to continue discussing relations between the United States and Russia," the sources said.

The visit comes amid growing U.S. frustration with the Kremlin's refusal to end Russia's war against Ukraine and after Trump said he had "canceled" a planned summit in Budapest.

Dmitriev, known for his desire for closer economic cooperation between Russia and the United States, recently proposed building a Trump-Putin tunnel between Alaska and Russia's Far East, the media reminded.

Dmitriev, who was born in Soviet-era Ukraine and educated at Harvard and Stanford in the United States, has worked as a consultant at 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 declared him a "close associate of Putin and his family.".

In April, Dmitriev became the first Russian official to visit Washington since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine. At the time, his visit, during which he met with Trump's envoy Steve Witkoff, was seen as an important step in warming relations between the Kremlin and the White House.

In April, a CNN source reported that the US government had temporarily lifted sanctions against Dmitriev to allow the State Department to issue him a visa to enter the country.

• On April 3, 2025, Reuters wrote that Dmitriev met with US officials in Washington.
• On April 4, Zelenskyy, commenting on Dmitriev's visit to the US, said that the main question for Russians is how to withdraw assets frozen in the West.