Vladimir Putin’s top negotiator has shared a video of himself casually wakesurfing off the Florida coast ahead of Sunday’s crunch talks between President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky.<\/b>
\nVladimir Putin\u2019s top negotiator shared a video of himself casually wake-surfing off the Florida coast ahead of Sunday\u2019s crunch talks between President Trump and his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky.
Kirill Dmitriev \u2014 the Harvard-educated special envoy and head of Russia\u2019s sovereign wealth fund \u2014 shared the video, along with the caption, \u201cMiami spirit,\u201d on X, in response to a post by Ukraine\u2019s deputy foreign minister Sergiy Kyslytsya announcing he had arrived in south Florida.
Putin\u2019s crony later shared a picture of himself on a balcony in Florida showing off the provocative t-shirt he wore during the video.
The white tee, emblazoned with Russia\u2019s national emblem and the slogan, \u201cNext time in Moscow,\u201d referred to Putin\u2019s invite to President Trump at the end of their joint press conference in Alaska in August.
Dmitriev also shared a picture of Trump and Putin shaking hands at previous talks, as he described Sunday as an \u201cimportant day on the path to peace,\u201d in a post on X.
\u201cGreat leaders, honest dialogue, peacemakers and the world should win. Warmongers and tricksters should repent. Let the path to peace prevail,\u201d he wrote.
He later shared details of President Trump\u2019s phone call with Putin ahead of Sunday\u2019s peace talks.
Dmitriev, 50, previously spent three days with Trump\u2019s special envoy Steve Witkoff in Miami, after the pair first met in February this year, when Putin\u2019s envoy played a role in securing the release of an American teacher from a Russian prison.
\u201cThere\u2019s a gentleman from Russia, his name is Kirill, and he had a lot to do with this. He was important. He was an important interlocutor bridging the two sides,\u201d Witkoff told reporters at the time.
Born in Soviet Ukraine, Dmitriev took part in a student exchange program in 1990 in New Hampshire, later returning to the US as a college student, where he studied at Stanford before earning an MBA at Harvard and later working for McKinsey in Los Angeles, BBC News reported.
Although previously critical of Putin\u2019s crackdown on the oligarchs in 2003, he came to be increasingly hostile toward Ukraine.
As well as working in diplomacy, he has previously suggested ambitious joint commercial projects between Moscow and Washington.
Dmitriev has proposed joint US-Russia energy projects in the Arctic, as well as partnering Russia\u2019s sovereign wealth fund with US companies in developing rare earth deposits.
He\u2019s also called for Russia to offer Elon Musk \u201ca small-sized nuclear power plant for a mission to Mars,\u201d and, most ambitiously of all, an $8 billion \u201cPutin-Trump\u201d rail tunnel linking Russia and the US under the Bering Strait.
As a result of his support for Ukraine\u2019s occupiers, Kyiv has slapped Dmitriev with sanctions for alleged crimes against the nation.<\/p>\n