Vladimir Putin aide Kirill Dmitriev will meet US special envoy Steve Witkoff in Washington DC this week, according to reports. Elsewhere, Russia claimed to have advanced on the battlefield. Follow the latest below, and submit your questions for our next war Q&A.
Wednesday 2 April 2025 12:51, UK
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We brought you reports earlier that senior Russian negotiator is Kirill Dmitriev is expected to visit Washington this week (see post at 6.51am).
The Kremlin has now said that the visit is “possible” and that contacts with the US were continuing.
So what do we know about the Kremlin official?
Born in Kyiv, in Soviet Ukraine, Kirill Dmitriev is the chief of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, the Russian Direct Investment Fund.
He studied at Stanford University in California and was later awarded an MBA with distinction at Harvard.
After Stanford, he worked at Goldman Sachs in New York before moving to Moscow, where he worked as CEO for Delta Private Equity Partners, an investment management company.
The Russian Direct Investment Fund, led by Dmitriev since
2011, organised the production of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine
against COVID-19.
After Russia’s invasion of Ukaine, the US sanctioned him and cast him as “a known Putin ally”.
He was not sanctioned by the European Union.
But CNN reported that the US will temporarily lift the sanctions for his visit.
Why is he an important figure?
Dmitriev has regular meetings with Putin and also has close relations to some key members of the Trump team.
He played a role in early contacts with the US when Trump was first elected president in 2016, as well as in building relations with Saudi Arabia, having met Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman dozens of times.
He also met US special envoy Steve Witkoff when he visited Moscow.
Russia has blamed Ukraine after it put restrictions on Black Sea oil exports, via the Caspian pipeline.
The Black Sea terminal handling Kazakhstan’s oil exports, pumped by US majors Chevron and Exxon Mobil, closed two of its three moorings earlier this week following inspections by Russia’s transport watchdog.
The Novorossiisk Black Sea port has also been suspended.
Kremlin: ‘We must not forget enormous damage’
Russia said Ukrainian drone attacks were to blame.
Speaking to reporters, Kremlin mouthpiece Dmitry Peskov said: “This is due to the damage that was caused to the CPC infrastructure after the strikes by Ukrainian drones.
“We must not forget that enormous damage was done there, very complex damage in technological terms. And this cannot, of course, not have consequences for the functionality of the entire system, unfortunately.”
For context: The attacks have occurred amid efforts mediated by Donald Trump’s administration to end the war between
Russia and Ukraine.
As we reported earlier (see 9.32 post), Ukraine and Russia are meant to have agreed a ceasefire in the Black Sea, brokered by the US – but both sides disagree about when it became active.
On Monday, Trump said he would impose secondary tariffs if Putin did not cooperate – targeting Russian oil.
But observers are sceptical about whether Trump would actually target Russia.
Russia claims it has captured a village in Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region.
The Kremlin’s defence ministry said its forces had taken control of Rozlyv – which has become the focal point of their advance through the area.
Sky News cannot independently verify this report.
Ukraine’s military has said Russian forces had launched five attacks on Rozlyv and the nearby village of Kostiantynopil, but made no acknowledgement that Rozlyv was now in Russian hands.
Elsewhere, in the eastern Ukrainian town of Maryinka, images are emerging of crumbling buildings and rubble-strewn roads after a Russian strike there…
The eastern flank of Ukraine – which is made up of Donetsk and Luhansk – is where fighting is intense, with Russia intent on capturing it all.
But they have not made any breakthrough in the region.
Russia’s demands for peace contradict what Donald Trump wants to achieve, the Institute for the Study of War (ISW) reports.
In its latest update, the US-based thinktank notes that senior Russian officials are continuing to reiterate the Russian demand for the elimination of the “root causes” of the war in Ukraine as a precondition for a peace agreement.
This is a “reference to Russia’s initial war demands” that contradict Donald Trump’s goal to achieve a lasting peace in Ukraine,” the ISW says.
The ISW states that Russia’s deputy foreign minister Sergei Ryabkov had claimed on 1 April that the Trump administration is attempting “some kind of scheme” to get a ceasefire before moving on to achieve an end to the war.
The Kremlin official claimed that the Trump administration’s plan to resolve the war in Ukraine does not address the “root causes” of the war and that Russia cannot accept the US proposal.
The Kremlin’s demands for the “full capitulation of Ukraine with the installation of a pro-Russian government in Ukraine and long-term commitments of Ukrainian neutrality” are the same demands Putin made at the beginning of the war, the ISW points out.
The recent ceasefire agreement put the spotlight on the Black Sea – even if, as we explained in our last post, both sides disagree about when the ceasefire comes into force.
Fighting in the area has shed light on the reality of modern naval warfare.
Drone vessels, packed with explosives, have been used by Ukraine to great effect against Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
Such unmanned vehicles are now well-known in the air – but the Ukraine war has shown how they are a growing maritime threat, too.
In the UK, the Royal Navy is training its crews to cope with attacks from drones and unmanned vehicles at sea.
Sky’s security and defence editor Deborah Haynes has been reporting from one British ship on a training exercise.
Her visit comes as the UK and Europe puts more emphasis on its armed forces being ready for defence, amid Donald Trump’s isolationism in the US.
Read the full report from Haynes below…
Ukraine has inflicted significant damage on Russia’s Black Sea Fleet since 2022, forcing Moscow to move some vessels out of its base in Crimea.
At the end of last month US and Russian officials held talks in Saudi Arabia aimed at sealing a Black Sea maritime ceasefire deal before a wider ceasefire agreement in Ukraine.
The talks followed US negotiations with Ukraine in Saudi Arabia.
The White House said the aim of the Saudi talks was to reach a maritime ceasefire in the Black Sea, allowing the free flow of shipping.
But after three days of intense negotiations, the Trump administration, Ukraine and Russia agreed to a limited ceasefire in which the key details, including what was covered and how it will start, were disputed by the warring sides.
Russia said the ceasefire would only start once certain sanctions had been lifted. Ukraine argued the ceasefire was immediate.
Then both sides accused each other of striking sites forbidden by the ceasefire.
US officials have told European allies they want them to keep buying American-made arms, sources have told Reuters.
In mid-March, the European Commission proposed boosting military spending and pooling resources on joint defence projects.
Some of the proposed measures could mean a smaller role for non-EU companies, including those based in the US and the UK, according to experts.
But then on 25 March, US secretary of state Marco Rubio told the foreign ministers of Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia that the US wants to continue participating in EU countries’ defence procurements, the sources told Reuters.
According to two of the sources, Rubio said any exclusion of US companies from European tenders would be seen negatively by Washington.
One northern European diplomat also said they had also been recently told by US officials that any exclusion from EU weapons procurements would be seen as inappropriate.
Rubio plans to discuss expectations that EU countries keep buying US weapons during his visit to Brussels this week, a senior state department official has said.
For context: Donald Trump has in recent months urged European allies to spend more on defence and take greater responsibility for their own security.
This in turn has led the EU to look to break its security dependency on the US, with a focus on buying more defence equipment in Europe.
Latvia will provide 1,500 combat drones to Ukraine, the country’s defence minister Andris Spruds has said.
In a statement on X, Spruds confirmed that two Latvian companies will deliver a total of 12,000 drones worth €17m to Ukraine this year.
He said the move was “part of an international drone coalition”.
This move follows Latvia’s decision to join Poland, Estonia and Lithuania in withdrawing from the Ottawa convention banning anti-personnel landmines last month due to the military threat from neighbouring Russia.
Donald Trump’s policies and off-the-cuff comments continue to impact Ukraine.
And later today his latest round of tariffs are expected to make waves in the global economy.
The US president is talking up today as “liberation day”. He believes tariffs will allow America to be stronger at home, helping its manufacturing and jobs.
It’s safe to say plenty of economists disagree. The fear is that tariffs will actually hurt the American economy, American shoppers – and businesses around the world.
When it comes to Ukraine, plenty of Ukrainians and Europeans would prefer Trump to focus on Ukraine’s “liberation” after Russia’s illegal invasion. But he has always been unashamedly “America First”.
When it comes to Russia, it should be noted that over the weekend Donald Trump said he was “very angry” and “pissed off” after Vladimir Putin criticised the credibility of Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy.
The president added that if Russia is unable to make a deal on “stopping bloodshed in Ukraine” – and Trump felt that Moscow was to blame – then he would put secondary tariffs on “all oil coming out of Russia”.
“That would be that if you buy oil from Russia, you can’t do business in the United States. There will be a 25% tariff on all oil, a 25 to 50-point tariff on all oil,” he said.
Images have emerged of charred buildings and firefighters attempting to put out fires after a Russian drone strike.
Russia has recently intensified its strikes on Kharkiv, Ukraine’s second-largest city, in the northeast of the country.
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