Kirill Dmitriev: Putin’s Messenger Arrives In Washington

Vladimir Putin and Kirill Dmitriev. Getty Images

While headlines are now consumed with Trump’s “Reciprocal Tariffs” — a sweeping trade assault targeting nearly every country on the planet, with one glaring exception: Russia — and U.S. media obsessed over Trump’s latest theatrical outburst, his feigned “outrage” at Vladimir Putin, something far more reprehensible is quietly unfolding in the background: a sanctioned Kremlin fixer walking freely into Washington for a meeting in the White House.

Kirill Dmitriev, the Kremlin’s most trusted financial operator and messenger, has quietly arrived in Washington. Not in disgrace. But with a special temporary sanctions waiver, personally approved by Trump, so he could waltz into the White House under the guise of "ceasefire talks."

Dmitriev isn’t just a financier—he’s the Kremlin’s preferred mechanism for laundering influence through business, not bullets. As CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), Russia’s wealth sovereign fund, and Putin’s slush fund, Dmitriev has long served as the regime’s financial frontman on the global stage.

His rise wasn’t about merit — it was about access. Through close personal ties to Putin’s family — his wife, Natalia Popova, a close university friend of Katerina Tikhonova, Putin’s daughter — Dmitriev secured a place in the Kremlin’s inner circle, becoming a key operator in its shadow diplomacy and global financial influence operations. And also has deep ties to Saudi authorities

Sanctioned by the U.S. in 2022 “to prevent Putin’s regime from raising capital to fund its invasion of Ukraine,” Dmitriev should be a pariah. Instead, as Russia continues its genocidal assault on Ukraine, he’s being welcomed back into Washington—legitimized, empowered, and treated as a partner in Trump’s sham “negotiation plan.”

This isn’t diplomacy. It’s Trump’s red-carpeted rehabilitation tour for the Kremlin—and it reeks of the same covert power plays we learned about during the 2016 election— but now in plain sight.

The Infamous Seychelles Meet

After all U.S. intelligence agencies concluded that Russia had interfered in the 2016 election to help Trump, his team didn’t distance themselves from the Kremlin—they leaned in.

In December 2016, during the presidential transition, Jared Kushner and Michael Flynn met with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak at Trump Tower. Kushner reportedly proposed establishing a secret communications backchannel—using Russian diplomatic facilities on U.S. soil—to shield their conversations from American intelligence.

This wasn’t just unprecedented. It was a deliberate effort to hide collaboration with a hostile foreign power.

At the same meeting, Flynn floated the idea of arranging a follow-up meeting in a third-party country—outside the reach of U.S. surveillance. Less than a month later, that plan became reality.

On January 11, 2017—just days before Trump took office—Putin’s trusted operative Kirill Dmitriev secretly met with Trump ally Erik Prince in the Seychelles. Also in attendance: UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ) and George Nader, MBZ’s adviser who was later convicted of child sex trafficking and illegally funneling foreign money into the Trump campaign.

The goal? Set up an off-the-books backchannel between Trump’s team and the Kremlin—before the American people even had a say. It wasn’t diplomacy. It was a shadow foreign policy coup.

Fast-forward to the height of the COVID crisis, and Dmitriev resurfaced—this time working alongside Jared Kushner. In one of the most bizarre and overlooked episodes of the pandemic, the two allegedly arranged a deal to import Russian ventilators into the U.S.—hailed as international cooperation. But what landed at JFK was no humanitarian lifeline: it was a shipment of defective, combustible ventilators, along with mystery “medical supplies” and household cleaning gloves. Dmitriev later boasted that he “paid” for the care package—yet the full contents and intent of the delivery remain unexplained to this day. Worse, recent revelations indicate Trump secretly shipped COVID tests to Russia while Americans stood in hours-long lines trying to get their own.

Now in 2025, it's happening again—only this time, the backchannel is inside the White House.

Enter: Steve Witkoff — The Diplomatic Impostor

Witkoff has no background in diplomacy, national security, or international relations. He is a luxury NYC real estate developer whose only qualification is loyalty to Trump. But today, he is the frontman for Trump’s Russia policy—and an open asset of the Kremlin.

His most recent stunt? Getting caught up in the explosive SignalGate scandal. While in Moscow, Witkoff was added to a Signal group chat that included classified U.S. war plans for strikes in Yemen. After leaving Moscow, Witkoff flew to Baku—another unsecured hotspot—where he remained in the chat as it circulated sensitive details about weapon payloads, targets, and strike timings.

What drew attention to Witkoff’s blatant spewing of Kremlin propaganda wasn’t just the timing — it was the platform. Appearing on Tucker Carlson’s show, right as Trump parades around sham “ceasefire” talks, Witkoff seized the moment to parrot Moscow’s most toxic garbage. He claimed that eastern Ukraine “wants to be under Russian rule,” questioned President Zelenskyy’s legitimacy, and sneered at British security guarantees as nothing more than “posturing.” This wasn’t statesmanship—it was Russian state-sponsored disinformation, laundered to Americans by a man posing as a peace envoy.

He even bragged that Putin commissioned a portrait of Trump—not as a joke, but as some grotesque diplomatic overture.

Witkoff is not negotiating peace. He’s brokering Ukraine’s surrender. His proposed Black Sea "ceasefire" would leave Russia in control of occupied ports and lay the groundwork for lifting sanctions. Russia is flooding the talks with FSB operatives like Sergey Beseda, while Witkoff actively lobbies for renewed U.S.-Russia business ties.

Steve Witkoff’s job is to make it all look legitimate — to rebrand Kremlin insiders as acceptable partners and to whitewash Russia’s genocide and war crimes.

None of this is normal and it’s a Kremlin-run operation playing out in real-time.

Rare Earth Extortion

Meanwhile, Trump has been pressuring Ukrainian President Zelenskyy to grant U.S. companies exclusive access to Ukraine’s rare earth minerals—resources vital for everything from weapons systems to electric vehicles.

At the same time, Dmitriev confirmed Russia and the U.S. have begun talks on developing rare earths inside Russia—including in illegally occupied Ukrainian territories. This isn’t peacekeeping but coordinated pillage and as Ukraine bleeds every single day, in Washington, Trump and Putin's envoys cut side deals over what they can extract from it.

The Musk Question

Furthermore, Dmitriev has said he plans to hold talks with Elon Musk about a potential joint U.S.-Russia Mars mission. “Our minds and technologies should serve the glory of humanity,” he declared — without a trace of irony — as Russian missiles continue to rain down on Ukrainian hospitals, homes, and civilian infrastructure.

The only question now is: Will Musk be at the meeting?

The Quiet Undoing of Sanctions

If the return of Kirill Dmitriev wasn’t outrageous enough, it gets worse.

As he arrived in Washington, the U.S. Treasury quietly lifted sanctions on yet another key figure in Putin’s orbit: Karina Rotenberg — the wife of Boris Rotenberg, one of Putin’s childhood friends.

The move wasn’t announced, no press release, and no justification.

The quiet removal of Karina Rotenberg from the U.S. sanctions list is even more outrageous in light of last year’s investigation by the OCCRP, which exposed her U.S. citizenship and role in shielding her husband's assets. The Rotenberg Files — a leak of over 50,000 internal emails and documents — revealed, among other things, how Karina served as a proxy for Boris Rotenberg, helping him move money, hold properties, and maintain access to global financial systems even after he was sanctioned. Karina’s removal from the sanctions list amounts to a reward — a signal that in Trump’s America, proximity to Putin still buys protection.

Also, in Trump’s America, access can be bought, records can be laundered, and war crimes and genocide can be whitewashed — all in service of Trump’s enduring fealty to Putin and his ongoing efforts to further Russia’s interests.

What’s Really Happening

What we’re witnessing is nothing short of a diplomatic heist — a sanctioned Kremlin insider escorted into the White House under the false flag of “peace,” while Trump’s envoy repeats Moscow’s propaganda, and the wife of Putin’s billionaire crony gets her sanctions quietly removed. This isn’t diplomacy. It’s the normalization of Russian influence in U.S. policymaking — not by hacking, but by handshakes, loopholes, and sham negotiations. It’s the public rehabilitation of war criminals and Kremlin enablers — all unfolding in plain sight, while the press chases distractions and Ukrainians continue dying under Russian fire.

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