\n<\/p>\n
The Russian government\u2019s top investment manager, who has Harvard and McKinsey credentials and fluent English, brought a simple printout to Tuesday\u2019s talks with the Trump administration in Saudi Arabia.<\/p>\n
Its message: By pulling out of Russia in outrage over the invasion of Ukraine, American companies had walked away from piles of cold, hard cash.<\/p>\n
\u201cLosses of U.S. companies by industry,\u201d read the document, which Kirill Dmitriev, the head of Russia\u2019s sovereign wealth fund, showed to a New York Times reporter. \u201cTotal losses,\u201d one of the columns said. The sum at the bottom: $324 billion.<\/p>\n
In appealing to President Trump, the Kremlin has zeroed in on his desire to make a profit. President Vladimir V. Putin said last month that the two leaders \u201chave a lot to talk about\u201d when it comes to energy and the economy. Sergey V. Lavrov, Russia\u2019s foreign minister, said after Tuesday\u2019s meeting that \u201cthere was great interest\u201d in the room \u201cin removing artificial barriers to the development of mutually beneficial economic cooperation\u201d \u2014 an apparent reference to lifting American sanctions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Remarkably, the Trump administration appears to be engaging with Russia\u2019s message without demanding payment up front. After Ukraine suggested the possibility of natural resource deals to Mr. Trump, his treasury secretary pushed to have the country sign away half its mineral wealth. And Mr. Trump continues to portray American allies as freeloaders, threatening more tariffs and demanding they pay more for their own defense.<\/p>\n
With Russia, by contrast, the administration seems to be signaling that the one thing Mr. Putin has to do to pave the way for a full reset in Moscow\u2019s relationship with Washington is end the war in Ukraine. Many Europeans and Ukrainians fear Mr. Trump will seek a peace deal on Russia\u2019s terms, especially after the American president suggested on Tuesday that Ukraine was to blame for the Russian invasion.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on Tuesday that an end to the war would be \u201cthe key that unlocks the door\u201d for \u201cpotentially historic economic partnerships.\u201d He echoed Mr. Lavrov in hinting that the United States could drop sanctions against Russia as part of such a deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere are sanctions that were imposed as a result of this conflict,\u201d Mr. Rubio said. \u201cI would say to you that in order to bring an end to any conflict there has to be concessions made by all sides.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
For the Kremlin, a key emissary to Mr. Trump\u2019s pecuniary mind-set has been Mr. Dmitriev, a youthful Putin ally and former banker who has specialized in developing Russian business ventures around the world. He has close ties to Saudi Arabia\u2019s de facto ruler, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, and he pushed the development and global distribution<\/a> of Russia\u2019s Covid-19 vaccine, Sputnik V.<\/p>\n In 2016, Mr. Dmitriev tried to use business contacts to build a back channel to Mr. Trump<\/a> in the name of \u201creconciliation\u201d between the United States and Russia, according to the report into Russian interference in that year\u2019s election by Robert S. Mueller III, the special counsel.<\/p>\n In Mr. Trump\u2019s first term, that reconciliation never came. This time around, Mr. Dmitriev has already had better luck.<\/p>\n Steve Witkoff, Mr. Trump\u2019s Middle East envoy, praised Mr. Dmitriev and Prince Mohammed for their role in helping secure Russia\u2019s release last week of Marc Vogel, an American schoolteacher imprisoned in Moscow. In Tuesday\u2019s talks, Mr. Dmitriev was part of Russia\u2019s delegation, using interviews with Western media outlets to promote business opportunities in Russia\u2019s oil sector and in the Arctic.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThe economic track allows diplomacy, allows communication, allows joint wins, allows joint success,\u201d Mr. Dmitriev said. \u201cAnd we saw that President Trump is focused on having success.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n He said that U.S. oil companies had \u201creally benefited from the Russian oil sector,\u201d adding, \u201cwe believe at some point they will be coming back.\u201d The document that he brought into Tuesday\u2019s meeting with the United States showed that the industries with the greatest purported losses among American companies that left Russia were \u201cI.T. and Media,\u201d at $123 billion, and \u201cConsumer and Healthcare,\u201d at $94 billion.<\/p>\n While American trade with Russia before Ukraine-related sanctions began in 2014 was tiny compared with trade with China or the European Union, big energy companies made huge investments, and American consumer goods and tech companies saw Russia as a significant market.<\/p>\n Mr. Dmitriev said the calculation took into account not only fire sales and write-downs, but also \u201cforgone profits.\u201d Western companies that left Russia have officially declared<\/a> more than $100 billion in losses since the start of the war, with many of their prized assets sold under onerous terms dictated by the Russian state.<\/p>\n Many world leaders have shifted to a business-focused message to cater to an American president whose foreign policy has little in common with his predecessors\u2019 emphasis on democracy, human rights and the trans-Atlantic alliance. But among the governments scrambling to influence Mr. Trump\u2019s view of the war in Ukraine, Moscow stands alone in its success in getting him to bite.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Ukrainian officials made the possibility of lucrative U.S. energy and mineral deals after the war\u2019s end a centerpiece of a charm offensive<\/a> with Mr. Trump that began last fall. Rather than take the invitation to cooperate, Mr. Trump appeared to decide that Ukraine\u2019s natural resources should serve as payback for past American support.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n In Kyiv last week, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine rejected<\/a> a proposal from Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent under which the United States would take a 50 percent interest in all of Ukraine\u2019s mineral resources.<\/p>\n Europeans have also tried to use talk of deals to get Mr. Trump\u2019s attention. During the World Economic Forum in Davos in late January, NATO\u2019s secretary general, Mark Rutte, said Europe would be willing to foot the bill for the United States to continue supplying arms to Ukraine using its defense industrial base.<\/p>\n Such entreaties did little to shift Mr. Trump\u2019s view of Europe as taking advantage of American security assistance, nor did they stop him from excluding the Europeans from his administration\u2019s talks with Russia.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Russia, on the other hand, has gotten the Trump administration\u2019s attention \u2014 both with the prospect of business deals and with the prospect of Mr. Trump being seen as a peacemaker by ending the war in Ukraine.<\/p>\n \u201cTrump doesn\u2019t care much about long-term strategic goals,\u201d said Boris Bondarev, a former Russian diplomat who resigned over the war in Ukraine<\/a>. \u201cPutin is trying to play on this feeling and get him interested in very quick material gains that are immediately clear to Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n Nataliya Vasilyeva contributed reporting from Istanbul and Paul Sonne from Berlin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n