Russian envoy Kirill Dmitriev has arrived in Washington to meet with US officials as part of President Donald Trump’s push to press for a cease-fire in the war in Ukraine, US media reports said on April 2.
Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), was to meet with US Special Envoy for the Middle East Steve Witkoff, according to the reports. Reuters quoted two US officials as saying that Witkoff invited Dmitriev to the United States last week.
Dmitriev is the high-ranking Russian official to visit Washington on state business since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The White House has not confirmed the visit, but the officials quoted by Reuters said the White House directed the State Department to issue a short-term license for Dmitriev to enter to the country. The envoy would otherwise not have been allowed in because he is under US sanctions, the officials said.
"Whatever your politics -- dialogue between the US and Russia matters. It’s about building a more secure, more prosperous world for everyone," Dmitriev said on X in a post that included an image of a jetliner reaching the US East Coast.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov confirmed earlier reports by Reuters and CNN that Dmitriev's visit might occur this week.
"Yes, I confirm. This visit may be possible. We are continuing to talk to the Americans. I will not give more concrete [details]," Peskov said.
Dmitriev is to discuss strengthening relations between the United States and Russia during his talks with Witkoff, according to CNN.
Trump, who recently expressed frustration with the pace of cease-fire talks and with Russian President Vladimir Putin, mentioned the war on April 2 at the end of a speech announcing sweeping tariffs against EU countries, Canada, Mexico, and other US trading partners.
Trump again vowed to bring an end to the war and said he believes the United States is "being given good cooperation by Russia and by Ukraine” in the negotiation process.
Dmitriev may be key in repairing relations between Moscow and Washington, which have sunk to the lowest level since the depths of the Cold War. The Russian envoy played a role in early contacts with the United States when Trump was elected president the first time in 2016.
Dmitriev recently has mentioned a host of initiatives that Russia and the United States could work on together, including rare earth mineral mining, energy, the Arctic, and space.
SEE ALSO: What Putin Really Means When He Talks About Long-Term PeaceProminent Russian opposition leader Vladimir Kara-Murza noted that Dmitriev is not a diplomat and said his arrival in Washington and apparent talks with Witkoff were “very illustrative” of the direction that the negotiations are taking.
“Judging by the personalities of these two interlocutors they are not going to talk about people. They are not going to talk about peace. The are not going to talk about the future of Ukraine,” Kara-Murza said on CNN on April 2.
“They are going to talk about money. They are going to talk about profits. They are going to talk about rare earth minerals,” he added.
He said the RDIF – the Russian sovereign wealth fund – “is a shadowy government agency that is very unpublic" through which billions of dollars flow.
He noted that recently a major investigation published by the Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), the organization set up by Kremlin critic and opposition politician Aleksei Navalny, who died suspiciously just over a year ago in a Russian prison, alleged that Dmitriev is involved in extensive corruption.
Kara-Murza also noted that comments made by Witkoff in a recent interview with former Fox News presenter Tucker Carlson on his social media-based program showed that the US envoy is not seeing Putin for who he really is.
Witkoff said that Putin had been “enormously gracious” when he recently met him at the Kremlin, adding that he doesn't regard Putin as a "bad guy.” The war and "all the ingredients that led up to it" make for a "complicated situation," Witkoff told Carlson. “It’s never just one person, right?”
Kara-Murza, who had been serving a 25-year prison sentence in Russia when he was released in a prisoner exchange in August, said Putin is hardly "someone whom we know nothing about" but a politician who has launched attacks on other countries, slammed political opponents in jail, or allegedly ordered them killed.
“I think it’s completely unacceptable to see senior officials of the United States administration acting as propagandists for the Kremlin and whitewashing all the crimes that Vladimir Putin has committed both against our own people in Russia, against the people of Ukraine, and against the people of so many other countries around the world," Kara-Murza said.
He rebutted Witkoff's comment that conflict is "never about one person," saying that often in history it has been.
“It was about Adolf Hitler. It was about Josef Stalin. Now it is about Vladimir Putin,” he said.