Trump Considers Lifting Sanctions on Putin’s ‘Slush Fund’
Japan to Tap $7 Billion from Government Fund to Subsidize Gasoline Prices Zelenskyy welcomed restored U.S.
missile-strike… RFE/RL journalists report the news in 21 countries where a free press is banned by the government or not fully established.
We provide what many… Four days after Russia launched its all-out effort to subjugate Ukraine, the US government and other Western alliesfired a broadside of financial sanctions aimed at punishing the Kremlin’s wallet for the assault.
So was a multibillion-dollar sovereign wealth fund that the Kremlin calls the Russian Direct Investment Fund, or RDIF.
Treasury called it “a slush fund for President Vladimir Putin [that] is emblematic of Russia’s broader kleptocracy.” After months of dormancy, US negotiators have ramped up efforts to find a negotiated settlement to end Russia’s war on Ukraine -- as well as normalize frosty relations between Washington and Moscow.
Many tilt heavily in Russia favor, something that was echoed in Putin’s remarks to European leaders earlier this week.
They also include lifting sanctions on the RDIF, whose chief executive, Kirill Dmitriev, is the Kremlin’s point person for talks with the Americans.
“This conversation is going on,”Kremlin foreign policy adviser Yury Ushakov told Russian reporters.“It’s been going on for some time, though I don’t know what the result will be.” “Dmitriev is actively reaching out, in particular, and therefore the question has come up and is being discussed,” Ushakov said on October 28,confirming a New York Timesreport a day earlier.
"Since its inception in the early 2010s, RDIF has served as a vehicle for channeling investments into companies and sectors that are strategically important to Putin," said Peter Harell, who served as a senior director on the White House National Security Council from 2021 to 2022.
"We should all be clear-eyed about what unsanctioning RDIF would mean: it would mean prioritizing American investment in Kremlin-aligned projects over supporting Ukraine," he said.
The fundwas established in 2011 during the interim period when Putin’s protege, Dmitry Medvedev, served as president, and Putin as prime minister.
It came at a time when Russian coffers were brimming with revenues from high global oil prices and fiscal planners were moving to put the country onto a rock-solid financial footing.
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