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chairman Donald Trump’s Ukraine faces 28-point peace proposal Criticism There is a huge discrepancy between the claims Vladimir PutinGratitude of.
Trump has given Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelensky until Thursday to accept the deal, which would cede territory to Moscow, take NATO off the table for Ukraine and allow Russia back into the G8.
As Zelensky faces a tough choice, US officials and lawmakers have expressed their concerns about Russian involvement in the plan after it was revealed that the administration had already held meetings with a blacklisted Kremlin official.
Kirill Dmitriev, a close associate of Putin, is its CEO. Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and took over as Special Presidential Envoy on Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation on 23 February this year despite little diplomatic experience.
Dmitriev and his fund are under US sanctions, which effectively bar US citizens and companies from dealing with them through 2022.
But that didn’t stop Trump’s special envoy Steve Witkoff and the president’s son-in-law jared kushner This came to light from a meeting with Dmitriev in Miami in late October. A US official told Reuters that Witkoff has met with Dmitriev several times this year and that the Trump administration had issued a special waiver to allow his entry.
“We think the Russian position is really being heard,” Dmitriev said, confirming his participation in the latest talks in an interview with Axios.
The 28-point plan resulting from that three-day meeting has been described by critics as a “Russian wish list” and welcomed by Putin.
Who is Kirill Dmitriev?
Dmitriev was born in Soviet-era Kiev in 1975 and became involved in the war behind the scenes despite having limited diplomatic experience. Those who knew him growing up have said that he was a hard-working student who was passionate about the United States.
“He was quite arrogant… but very organized, and if he wanted to achieve something, he worked at it,” said Ukrainian MP Volodymyr Ariev, who was in the same school year as Dmitriev. Guardian,
Dmitriev was one of the first Soviet exchange students from Ukraine to move to the United States, when he came to a host family in New Hampshire in 1989.
Despite having no prior English-language schooling, he found success at Foothill Community College in California and later went to Stanford University, where he earned a BA in Economics. He later went to Harvard Business School to earn an MBA.
Dmitriev has since made a name for himself as a businessman, working early on for McKinsey & Company and Goldman Sachs. In 2011, he was appointed as CEO of the newly created RDIF, a sovereign wealth fund to co-invest equity in Russian companies.
“Dmitriev is obsessed with being considered important,” said a source who has known him since the late 2000s. Guardian“He is extremely ambitious,,, very thin physically but exceptionally good at selling himself,”
Concerns about his role in negotiations
A US official told Reuters that the Trump administration’s discussions with Dmitriev have raised concerns among those in the intelligence community.
Dmitriev has previously used his role in the RDIF to make inroads with various Western governments and businesses, despite US sanctions.
According to a Justice Department report published by special counsel Robert Mueller in 2019, Dmitriev discussed US-Russia relations in a 2017 meeting with former Blackwater CEO and Trump ally Eric Prince. Mueller’s team was investigating ties between the Trump team and Russia.
The businessman previously worked directly with Kushner during the administration, coordinating with him on the delivery of ventilators to the US during the pandemic. According to a senior US official, the ventilators were provided by the RDIF and raised concerns among Treasury Department officials that the US might violate its own sanctions.
When sanctions were imposed against Dmitriev by the US Treasury in 2022, he was described as a “known associate of Putin”.
A statement at the time said, “He has leveraged his connections with universities and organizations in the United States to serve as the Russian President’s representative to American institutions, providing access to major economic opportunities in the United States.”
In recent years, Dmitriev has appeared on various American television stations and at events such as the World Economic Forum in Davos to promote the strengthening of trade relations between the United States and Russia. He delivered a similar message at the meeting in Miami, according to public accounts of the meeting.
Just last month, US Treasury Secretary Scott Besant described Dmitriev as a “Russian propagandist” in an interview about Trump’s sanctions against Moscow.
Tension behind the scenes?
Despite becoming an ally of Putin, it appears that Dmitriev is not universally popular among other members of the president’s inner circle.
Russian reports claim the businessman clashed with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov and presidential aide Yuri Ushakov during a meeting with US officials in Saudi Arabia in February.
Before the first meeting between the two countries after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Putin told Lavrov that the delegation would consist only of him and Ushakov. agentswowIn a separate meeting, he accepted Dmitriev’s request to be part of the talks without informing his foreign minister,
When Lavrov was told that the third seat was for Dmitriev, he reportedly moved the chair away from the table and said: “If he wants to participate, let Vladimir Vladimirovich participate.” [Putin] Tell me yourself.”