Trump Administration Considers Lifting Sanctions on Russia’s Sovereign Investment Fund

· The move would be the latest U.S. concession to Moscow as President Trump pursues economic incentives he hopes will secure an end to war in Ukraine.

· Possible sanctions relief: The Trump administration is assessing an application to lift sanctions on the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a major government investment fund associated with the Kremlin.

· Diesel deal with the U.S.: The fund has helped arrange shipments of Russian diesel fuel to the United States following the temporary suspension of certain sanctions on October 9, 2026.

· Russia’s diplomatic push: RDIF chief Kirill Dmitriev, acting as President Vladimir Putin’s economic envoy, is promoting business deals with the U.S. as part of negotiations aimed at ending the Ukraine war.

· Three tankers dispatched: Russian officials said three tankers carrying Russian diesel had departed for the United States in October. The shipments reportedly had not yet been paid for by U.S. buyers.

· U.S. position on sanctions: The Treasury Department maintains that the existing temporary authorization may already permit the relevant diesel transactions. It is separately reviewing the fund’s application for broader sanctions relief under established procedures.

· Background to sanctions: The Biden administration sanctioned RDIF shortly after Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, describing it as a financial instrument linked to Putin and Russia’s alleged kleptocracy.

· Broader economic proposals: Discussions between U.S. and Russian officials have also covered the sale of a stake in a Russian oil company, natural gas production in Alaska and expanded Russian gas exports to Europe.

· Trump administration’s rationale: U.S. envoys believe economic cooperation could encourage Putin to pursue peace by demonstrating the potential benefits of improved bilateral relations.

· Criticism of the approach: Critics, including some Republican lawmakers and former U.S. officials, argue that easing sanctions could provide economic benefits to Russia without securing a settlement in Ukraine.

· Dmitriev’s influence: Dmitriev has developed close working relationships with U.S. negotiators Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner and is advocating renewed U.S.-Russia commercial ties even before the war ends.

[ABS News Service/28.10.2026]

The Trump administration is exploring a new concession to Russia: lifting sanctions on the country’s flagship government investment fund, long viewed by U.S. officials as one of the Kremlin’s most powerful tools of international influence.

Russian officials have pushed for the move as part of broader talks about the fund’s involvement in shipping Russian diesel fuel to the United States, according to people familiar with the negotiations.

A U.S. official confirmed that the administration was assessing the fund’s application for sanctions to be removed through established procedures as part of an effort to “improve U.S.-Russia relations and help end the war.” The official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the talks, praised the fund’s chief, Kirill Dmitriev, as “a helpful envoy” to U.S. negotiators in discussions to end the conflict.

The consideration of more sanctions relief for Russia, which has not been previously reported, shows how the Kremlin is using a recent flurry of diplomacy over the war in Ukraine to advance an agenda that appears to have little to do with securing peace.

In recent weeks, Mr. Trump’s envoys and Mr. Putin have discussed the sale of part of a Russian oil giant to a well-connected investor group; an effort to produce natural gas in Alaska, from which several executives resigned amid concerns about hidden Russian financing; and a proposal to increase Russian gas exports to Europe that has stunned European governments.

Removing sanctions on the multibillion-dollar fund, called the Russian Direct Investment Fund, would be a significant unwinding of the yearslong U.S. effort to use economic pressure to get Russia to change its behavior. The fund has invested billions of dollars in Russian companies, often alongside investors from the Middle East and elsewhere, pushing to expand Russia’s global influence.

The Biden administration imposed sanctions on the fund days after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, calling it “a slush fund” for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia that was “emblematic of Russia’s broader kleptocracy.”

Eric Green, who oversaw Russia policy as part of the White House’s National Security Council at the time, said targeting the fund was an early priority because its access to the Western financial system could help Russia finance the war and because of its “association with projects closely identified with Putin.”

Now the fund has taken a lead role in implementing Mr. Trump’s diesel deal, helping to arrange the first shipments of Russian diesel to the United States after Mr. Trump suspended sanctions on it on Oct. 9, a key Russian official has said. The fund’s head, Mr. Dmitriev, has acted as Mr. Putin’s economic envoy to the Trump administration, leading the Kremlin’s effort to convince U.S. officials of the great potential of business deals with Russia.

“It’s been really, really good dealing with Kirill,” Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump’s special envoy for peace missions, told Mr. Putin at the negotiating table in St. Petersburg, Russia, last week.

In the Trump team’s view, negotiating business deals with Mr. Putin now can help end the war in Ukraine by showing the Russian president that the United States is serious about building a new and prosperous relationship with Moscow. To the many critics of that approach, including some Republican lawmakers, Mr. Trump is simply ceding economic benefits to Mr. Putin without pressuring him to end the war.

Mr. Green, the former Biden administration official, said lifting sanctions on the fund would be a “real strong message that we are relaxing the previous position that we weren’t going to relax the economic sanctions and other costs until there was a settlement in Ukraine.”

Speaking at a conference in Moscow on Oct. 16, Mr. Dmitriev boasted that the diesel deal was among the “concrete examples” starting to convince Americans that “sanctions are, in principle, philosophically wrong.” He said that his fund was prepared to handle U.S. payments for the Russian diesel, despite “a sea of sanctions restrictions.”

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Mr. Dmitriev left unmentioned that he was trying to get sanctions removed on his own fund amid the talks over the diesel deal, according to the people familiar with the negotiations. Mr. Dmitriev’s fund offered to serve as the go-between for Russian diesel being sold to the United States, while also asking for American sanctions on the fund to be relaxed, the people said.

The talks played out as Mr. Dmitriev helped put in motion an effort to hand Mr. Trump a visible win at a time of record high diesel prices.

Three tankers carrying Russian diesel have set sail for the United States this month, according to Russian officials. The shipments were made “with the significant support” of Mr. Dmitriev’s fund, a Russian vice prime minister, Aleksandr Novak, said on Friday.

The diesel was shipped without any U.S. buyers having paid for it, according to some of the people familiar with the negotiations. One of the tankers, the Agioi Fanendes, was scheduled to arrive in the United States on Nov. 7, after leaving Primorsk, Russia, on Oct. 23, according to Kpler and TankerTrackers.com, two ship tracking firms. The ship recently changed its destination from New York to “for orders,” meaning it had not yet received instructions on where to discharge.

As Mr. Dmitriev’s fund sought sanctions relief amid the diesel talks, the Treasury Department took the position that the fund already had all the permission it needed to handle diesel transactions thanks to the Treasury’s Oct. 9 announcement suspending sanctions on Russian diesel. Instead, the Treasury is going through its normal process in assessing the fund’s applications for getting sanctions removed, meaning that it would need to prove that the reasons for which it was originally sanctioned are no longer in effect, people familiar with the process said.

Despite Mr. Trump’s friendly rhetoric toward Mr. Putin, he has until now left almost all of the Biden-era sanctions on Russia in place.

But Mr. Dmitriev, a financier fluent in English who studied at Harvard and Stanford, has shown significant clout with the Trump administration. He has spearheaded the Kremlin’s effort to float potential economic deals to Washington, a strategy apparently aimed at getting Mr. Trump to focus more on doing business with Russia and less on pressuring it to stop its invasion of Ukraine.

“The ice has finally broken,” Mr. Dmitriev said at the Oct. 16 conference, emphasizing that he was discussing deals to be done with the United States “right now” rather than only after the end of the war.

Mr. Dmitriev’s wife is close with a daughter of Mr. Putin, people who know them say, and he has done business with Gulf leaders like Mohammed bin Salman, the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, who also have the ear of Mr. Trump.

During the pandemic, Mr. Dmitriev and his fund financed the development of Russia’s Covid-19 vaccine, spearheaded its distribution around the world and often criticized Western vaccines. Since Mr. Trump’s re-election two years ago, Mr. Dmitriev has taken to X almost daily, in English, and echoed White House talking points.

“Ideological warmongering Biden-think is being rejected as destructive and inefficient,” he wrote about Mr. Trump’s diesel deal last week.

Mr. Dmitriev’s primary U.S. interlocutors have been Mr. Witkoff, who is also a real-estate developer and friend of Mr. Trump, and Jared Kushner, Mr. Trump’s son-in-law. In St. Petersburg last week, Mr. Witkoff approvingly told Mr. Dmitriev that “our Treasury Department is working with you now independently.”

“I think that’s leading to a sense of what the possibilities are between our two nations,” Mr. Witkoff went on. “We even talk about it now openly with the Ukrainians, to give them some sort of sense about what the possibilities will be when this whole conflict is ended.”