New persons in the negotiations on Ukraine

^{Sergey Karpukhin / TASS / Profimedia; David Paul Morris / Bloomberg / Getty}
Steve Witkoff has been friends with Donald Trump for more than 40 years - they both invested in real estate. Witkoff even named his grandson Don, born in December 2024, in honor of Trump.

At the beginning of Trump's second term, Witkoff unexpectedly became one of the world's most important diplomats. As Trump's special envoy for the Middle East, he played a key role in the signing of a ceasefire agreement between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip in January 2025. Trump then tasked him with establishing contacts with Russia to end the nearly three-year-old war in Ukraine.

On February 11, Witkoff flew to Moscow on a private business jet to pick up Mark Vogel, an American schoolteacher who was serving a sentence in a Russian prison for drug smuggling. In exchange, the US released Alexander Vinnik, the co-founder of the BTC-e cryptocurrency exchange, who pleaded guilty to money laundering.

^{Donald Trump and Mark Vogel, February 11, 2025
Kevin Lamarque / Reuters / Scanpix / LETA}
During his brief visit, Witkoff managed to speak with a representative of the Russian authorities. When asked by reporters after his return, he said: "There is a gentleman from Russia, his name is Kirill, and he is directly involved in this." He was a very important intermediary who built a bridge between the two sides.”

The person in question is Kirill Dmitriev, the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF). A Stanford and Harvard graduate who worked at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs in his youth, he managed Ukraine’s Icon Private Equity investment fund, which had an estimated $1 billion in capital from 2007 to 2011 — mostly money from Viktor Pinchuk, the son-in-law of former Ukrainian President Leonid Kuchma. Pinchuk recommended Kirill Dmitriev to Vladimir Dmitriev, the head of the state-owned VEB corporation (they are not related). In 2011, the two Dmitrievs persuaded then-President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to create a sovereign wealth fund, which Kirill Dmitriev would head.

The most high-profile project in which RDIF invested was the Sputnik V vaccine against Covid.

Dmitriev is close to the Putin family. His wife, Natalya Popova, a classmate and friend of the president's youngest daughter, Katerina Tikhonova, has been her deputy at the Innopraktika Foundation since 2012. Dmitry himself, along with Tikhonova's then-husband Kirill Shamalov, was on the board of directors of Sibur for several years.

Dmitriev has extensive connections in the Middle East. The RDFI's largest partners include sovereign wealth funds from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. The boards of directors of these funds include heads of state and government and their relatives - all of whom are Dmitriev's regular interlocutors.

In 2017, shortly before Donald Trump's first inauguration, Dmitriev met in the Seychelles with some UAE officials and a group of American businessmen, including Eric Prince, founder of the private military company Blackwater, and the brother of Betsy DeVos, whom Trump soon appointed Secretary of Education. Later, special counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Russian interference in the American election, suggested that this was one of the meetings aimed at establishing informal contacts between Russian officials and the Trump administration.

After Trump's first inauguration, Dmitriev met with Anthony Scaramucci, an adviser to the American president, at the Davos Economic Forum.

Since the start of the full-scale Russian-Ukrainian war, Middle Eastern countries have regularly come up with popular and unpopular peace initiatives. Saudi Arabia brokered the release of foreigners who fought on the side of Ukraine and were taken prisoner by Russia. In 2023, an international conference on establishing peace between Russia and Ukraine was held there, but Russia did not participate in it. In December 2023, Putin visited the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Qatar tried to mediate between Russia and Ukraine in 2024 on a private issue: the inviolability of Russian oil infrastructure in exchange for the inviolability of Ukrainian energy infrastructure. The deal failed.

In August 2024, Kirill Dmitriev participated in negotiations to replace Mark Vogel with Alexander Vinnik. Also present were the Crown Prince, Prime Minister and current ruler of Saudi Arabia, Mohammed bin Salman.

Steve Witkoff also has extensive connections in the Middle East — and he is also primarily associated with sovereign wealth funds. For example, from 2013 to 2023, he co-founded the Park La in Manhattan with the United Arab Emirates Fund Follow “Zamin” news on “Telegram”