A close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin is in Washington for talks with the Trump administration, underlining the striking turnaround in relations between the United States and Russia, as the envoy is the most senior Russian official to visit since the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.

Kirill Dmitriev, who runs Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, is meeting with Steve Witkoff, a real estate developer and close Trump ally who has been a key figure in efforts to secure an agreement to end the war in Ukraine, according to a person familiar with the meeting. The talks are “ongoing,” said this person, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss a sensitive matter.

Dmitriev, who needed a temporary waiver from U.S. sanctions barring him from visiting America, has been touting the economic benefits of improved relations between the United States and Russia. He’s been offering joint multibillion-dollar deals on rare earth minerals and cooperation on energy exploration and shipping routes in the Arctic. “We see many opportunities for cooperation in the investment and economic sphere,” Dmitriev told reporters at a business forum in Moscow last month.

A graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Business School who helped run a U.S.-backed private equity firm in Moscow in the 2000s, Dmitriev has positioned himself as someone the Trump administration can do business with. And he has the kind of powerful connections that matter in Moscow. His wife, Natalia Popova, is close friends with Putin’s youngest daughter Ekaterina Tikhonova, according to three former associates, and serves as deputy director of Innopraktika, Tikhonova’s technology foundation.