An envoy of the Kremlin met at the White House on Wednesday with the senior helper of President Trump on negotiations in Russia, Steve Witkoff, according to a person in Washington with the knowledge of the interviews. The Russian correspondent, Kirill Dmitriev, said online on Thursday that he had been to Washington to meet the officials of the Trump administration.
Mr. Dmitriev’s visit is the first time in years in which it was known that a high Russian official traveled to the United States for interviews with American counterparts.
Dmitriev is the head of the sovereign Wealth Fund Russo and the special representative of Vladimir V. Putin for investments and economic cooperation. His counterparty, Mr. Witkoff, a real estate businessman who is also the special correspondent of Mr. Trump for the Middle East, traveled at the end of last month in Moscow, where he met Mr. Putin.
Mr. Dmitriev arrived in Washington with two assistants Tuesday, and he and Mr. Witkoff met at the White House on Wednesday afternoon, said the person in Washington is familiar with events. The two officials continued to speak in the evening.
The talks seemed to be the last step in Russia’s efforts to improve ties with the United States. The rapprochement seemed to be in the balance after Mr. Trump declared last weekend that he was “very angry” with Mr. Putin for the observations that the Russian president had made in Ukraine.
The visit of Mr. Dmitriev came despite the sanctions imposed by the Biden administration that described it as “a well -known ally of Putin”. The meeting took place even when Trump excluded Russia from the list of countries affected by the strong rates revealed on Wednesday.
The Treasury Department suspended the penalties for Mr. Dmitriev for seven days to allow him to visit, and the State Department then granted him a renunciation of travel and a visa, said the person in Washington. Mr. Dmitriev was still in Washington on Thursday.
Dimitriev said on Telegram Thursday that he had met “representatives of the administration of President Donald Trump” Wednesday and would have done so again Thursday.
Thursday morning the National Security Council of the White House postponed the questions to the State Department and the State Department therefore addressed questions to the White House.
Dmitriev, a 49 -year -old former banker who studied in Stanford and Harvard and worked on McKinsey and Goldman Sachs, emerged as a key emissary for Mr. Putin in the efforts of the Kremlin to build a close relationship with Mr. Trump.
Mr. Dmitriev’s message, adapted to Mr. Trump’s pecuniary mentality, was that the United States have a profit from closer ties with Russia.
In February, Mr. Dmitriev worked with Mr. Witkoff to help broker an exchange of prisoners who led to the release of March Fogel, an American teacher imprisoned in Moscow.
In the talks with Mr. Witkoff and other American officials in Saudi Arabia, days later, Dmitriev said that the US companies had undergone losses of 324 billion dollars eliminating Russia after the invasion of Ukraine by Putin.
Dmitriev declared in his social media post on Thursday that his meetings concerned the restoration of American-Russian dialogue. The report had been “completely destroyed under the Biden administration”, he wrote, And the United States could benefit from cooperation “in international affairs and economics”.
“A real understanding of the Russian position opens up new opportunities for constructive interaction, also in the investment and in the economic sphere,” said Dmitriev.
He did not mention the negotiations on the war in Ukraine between Moscow and Washington. Those talks seem to have run over in the last few days, after Putin has rejected the proposal of Trump and Ukraine for a ceased 30 -day fire.
Trump declared last weekend that he was “very angry” for some of Mr. Putin’s comments on Ukraine, increasing the possibility that the American president could abandon his efforts to reconstruct the ties with Russia.
But the visit of Mr. Dmitriev indicated that the Trump administration was continuing to reverse the isolation of Russia of the Biden administration on the diplomatic phase.
In another sign of continuous commitment between Washington and Moscow, Sergey V. Lavrov, Foreign Minister of Russia, said this week that preparations were underway for a second round of interviews aimed at facilitating the work of American and Russian diplomats who operated in mutual countries.
US and Russian officials met for the first time in Istanbul on February 27 for the talks on the years of playing tit-per-tat restrictions who reduced the American mission to Russia and the Russian mission in the United States in Skeleton Staffs.
“We can see signs of progress and the will of our US partners to raise these obstacles to the normal work of diplomats in our respective capital,” said Lavrov.