Russian President Vladimir Putin’s envoy Kirill Dmitriev is set to arrive in Miami on Saturday, where he is scheduled to meet with U.S. President Donald Trump’s top envoy Steve Witkoff, along with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, to continue discussions related to the war in Ukraine.
Dmitriev, the chief executive of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), was appointed as Putin’s special representative last year following the resumption of dialogue between Washington and Moscow over a potential settlement to the conflict. Since then, he has emerged as Moscow’s primary unofficial interlocutor with the Trump administration.
Over the past year, Dmitriev has held repeated meetings with Witkoff both in the United States and in Russia, including earlier this month when Witkoff and Kushner traveled to Moscow for talks with Putin at the Kremlin. Saturday’s meeting will mark Dmitriev’s third visit to the United States in four months.
While the agenda has not been publicly disclosed, the talks are expected to focus on Ukraine as well as the upcoming bilateral negotiations between Russian and Ukrainian delegations scheduled to take place in Abu Dhabi on Sunday. The Emirati-mediated talks are set to proceed without U.S. participation.
Despite the frequency of high-level meetings, skepticism remains over whether Dmitriev’s visit will yield any tangible progress. Like Witkoff—who has visited Russia six times since last year—Dmitriev has been part of a cycle of repeated engagements that have so far failed to produce a durable diplomatic breakthrough. His previous visits occurred in April, October, and December of last year.
During an October trip to Washington, Dmitriev held meetings with Trump administration officials and members of Congress in what was widely seen as an effort to prevent the collapse of talks following Trump’s decision to sanction Russian oil companies. Dmitriev was also reported to have contributed input to a 28-point peace proposal drafted in November.
That proposal, however, was significantly diluted during negotiations and ultimately presented to Putin as a collection of unresolved documents rather than a finalized framework. The plan reportedly lacked full agreement even between Washington and Kiev, effectively ending what had initially been promoted by the Trump administration as a comprehensive roadmap toward peace.
One year into Trump’s presidency, many observers now describe the diplomatic process as trapped in a recurring cycle: high-profile visits and optimistic rhetoric followed by stagnation, public recriminations from Trump toward Moscow, and renewed threats—only for the process to reset once again without addressing the core disputes driving the war.