The CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, Kirill Dmitriev, met with delegations from the U.S. and Germany today at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. The ‘hard news’ development was his announcement that Russia is pushing ahead with the “Putin-Trump tunnel” project, connecting Russia and the U.S. across the Bering Strait. Dmitriev, who, as Putin’s Special Representative, had pushed the project before and during the 2025 Alaska Summit between Putin and Trump, has been in regular contact with Trump’s representatives, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, on possible cooperative economic projects. On the sidelines of SPIEF, he told Zvezda TV channel, [according to TASS]https://tass.ru/ekonomika/27648903), that tomorrow an engineering company would be contracted “for further work on the tunnel’s engineering design.” He declared: “There will be a tunnel.”
Dmitriev also participated in a discussion session that included the American Chamber of Commerce President Robert Agee, which he said was “a productive Russia-U.S. session during @SPIEF. We are restoring dialogue and cooperation between our countries.” Dmitriev posted: “American Chamber of Commerce President Robert Agee said U.S. businesses continue operating in Russia and remain active participants in the St. Petersburg forum, highlighting ongoing economic and cultural dialogue and signs of efforts to improve relations.” For his part, Agee announced that, in honor of the 250th birthday of the U.S. Declaration of Independence, Moscow would host a U.S.-Russia hockey game on July 1. He situated it as part of the effort “to break the ice” between the two countries.
As part of his busy day, he also met with the Deputy Chairman of Germany’s AfD party, Markus Frohnmaier, and reported: “Looking forward to building a great FUTURE together with AfD, Germany’s most popular party. Along with AfD’s Deputy Chairman Markus Frohnmaier, I discussed economic cooperation with Germany, including restarting the Russia-Germany-US business dialogue.” Separately, he acknowledged that there was no technical problem in reopening part of the Nord Stream pipeline from Russia to Germany.
Frohnmaier posted a response: “Thank you, Kirill. It was a pleasure meeting you. At a time when many seem more comfortable with confrontation than conversation, genuine dialogue matters more than ever. Real progress starts when people are willing to speak with one another rather than about one another. I especially appreciated the opportunity to hear first-hand perspectives on the ongoing efforts to achieve peace in Ukraine. Too often, public debates are shaped by assumptions rather than direct exchanges. My impression is that opportunities for peace exist and deserve to be explored with seriousness and determination. I look forward to continuing our exchange and hopefully expanding it into a trilateral conversation in the future.”
Otherwise, Dmitriev made the following salient point while talking to reporters on the sidelines of the forum: “We continue to cooperate with a number of Western countries, but our focus is definitely on the Global South… the Global South accounts for more than 80% of all economic growth in the world.”
