MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russian President Vladimir Putin sent a delegation to meet with senior officials from U.S. President Donald Trump’s administration in Riyadh on Tuesday in their highest-level talks since Moscow sent its forces into Ukraine in 2022.
Following are the key members of the Russian delegation:
FOREIGN MINISTER SERGEI LAVROV
Lavrov, aged 74 and in office since 2004, is Moscow’s longest-serving foreign minister since Soviet times.
A graduate of the prestigious Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), he speaks fluent English and French and also Sinhalese, having worked as a Soviet diplomat in Sri Lanka.
Before becoming foreign minister, Lavrov was Russia’s permanent representative to the United Nations.
He can be acerbic, especially with interlocutors whom he considers poorly prepared, but also dour, once remarking: “I am not paid to be an optimist.”
KREMLIN FOREIGN POLICY ADVISER YURI USHAKOV
Ushakov, aged 77, has been advising Putin since 2012.
Also a graduate of MGIMO, Ushakov attends Putin’s most important international meetings, and speaks for him on major diplomatic issues. He speaks English and Danish.
While ambassador to Washington from 1998 to 2008, he wrote: “What offends us is the view shared by some in Washington that Russia can be used when it is needed and discarded or even abused when it is not relevant to American objectives.”
KIRILL DMITRIEV, HEAD OF RUSSIA’S SOVEREIGN WEALTH FUND
Dmitriev, 49, is an investment banker who studied in the U.S. at Harvard and Stanford in the 1990s. He worked at the U.S. firms Goldman Sachs and McKinsey before returning to Moscow.
He was not present as Lavrov and Ushakov sat down with the U.S. officials, but attended separate meetings in Riyadh.
Dmitriev ran the private equity firm Delta Equity Partners, backed by U.S. capital, in Russia before being appointed by Putin to head the Russian Direct Investment Fund, created in 2011 to facilitate foreign investment.
He played a role in early contacts with the U.S. when Trump was first elected president in 2016, as well as in building relations with Saudi Arabia, which led to an oil price agreement under the expanded OPEC+ producers’ forum.
Dmitriev has met several times with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, who helped to mediate a prisoner exchange between Russia and the U.S. this month.
Dmitriev told reporters in Riyadh: “We really see that President Trump and his team is a team of problem solvers, people who have already addressed a number of big challenges very swiftly, very efficiently and very successfully.”
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Kevin Liffey)
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