Trump officials’ meeting with sanctioned Russian in Miami spurs questions about Ukraine proposal
U.S. officials and lawmakers are increasingly concerned about a meeting last month in which representatives of the Trump administration met with Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian envoy who is under U.S. sanctions, to draft a plan to end the war in Ukraine, according to multiple sources familiar with the matter.
The meeting took place in Miami at the end of October and included special envoy Steve Witkoff, President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Dmitriev, who leads the Russian Direct Investment Fund, one of Russia’s largest sovereign wealth funds.
A close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, Dmitriev has taken a leading role in talks with the U.S. about the war and has met with Witkoff several times this year. The Trump administration issued a special waiver to allow his entry, a senior U.S. official told Reuters. [Continue reading…]
When relations between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin soured this autumn, with the US president publicly accusing Moscow of blocking a path to a peace in Ukraine and announcing significant sanctions against Russia’s oil sector, one man saw an opening.
Kirill Dmitriev, the US-savvy, Harvard-educated head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, boarded a plane to Florida late October, where he met Steve Witkoff, the property developer serving as Trump’s freelance envoy on Ukraine.
The two men, neither of whom has any real diplomatic experience, began drafting a plan that would impose draconian terms on Ukraine and hand Moscow sweeping influence over the country’s political and military sovereignty.
The scheme, which surfaced in media reports on Wednesday, has thrust Dmitriev back into the global spotlight – a position, several people who have met him over the years say, he has long craved.
“Dmitriev is obsessed with being perceived as important,” said one source, who has known him since the Moscow business scene of the late 2000s. “He is ruthlessly ambitious,” the source added, describing him as “very thin on substance but exceptionally good at selling himself”.
The source, like others, asked for anonymity so they could speak freely. “Fake it till you make it” was Dmitriev’s modus operandi, the source said. “And he has, objectively, made it very far.” [Continue reading…]