MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s sovereign wealth fund chief Kirill Dmitriev will meet a U.S. delegation in Saudi Arabia on Tuesday to focus on strengthening ties and increased economic cooperation, a source in Riyadh told Reuters.
The meeting involving Dmitriev is the first confirmation that the U.S.-educated former Goldman Sachs banker will be involved in talks with the United States.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio is due in Saudi Arabia to meet Russian officials in Saudi Arabia alongside Trump’s national security adviser Mike Waltz and White House Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff.
Dmitriev, 49, is an investment banker who studied at Harvard and Stanford in the 1990s. He worked at the U.S. firms Goldman Sachs and McKinsey before returning to Moscow.
Dmitriev ran the U.S. capital-backed private equity firm Delta Equity Partners in Russia before being appointed by Putin to head the RDIF, which was created in 2011 to facilitate foreign investment in Russia.
He played a role in early contacts between Moscow and Trump’s team when Trump was first elected president in 2016, as well as in building Russia’s relationship with Saudi Arabia, which led to an OPEC+ oil price agreement.
Dmitriev has met several times with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who also played a role in mediating last week’s prisoner exchange between Russia and the U.S.
Saudi Arabia has been mentioned by both sides as a likely venue for the planned Putin-Trump summit.
(Reporting by Reuters; editing by Guy Faulconbridge)
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