Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Grushko told the 19th Verona Eurasian Economic Forum on Oct. 22, just days after the encouraging dialogue between President Putin and U.S. envoy Steve Witkoff, that a fresh start with the U.S. is possible, but that it requires all punitive sanctions against Russia be lifted. According to TASS, Grushko stated: “We can start fresh with the US. We can move past this story [of sanctions]; but, in order to forget it, the United States and Western Europe need to lift absolutely all sanctions. It is impossible to develop relations if we are navigating a minefield, not knowing where it will detonate, or where these sanctions will be applied,” the Russian diplomat said.

Speaking at the same Verona forum, Kirill Dmitriev, Putin’s head of Economic Cooperation with Foreign Countries and Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) CEO, talked about the potential for U.S.-Russian economic cooperation, according to TASS. “We see that supplies of Russian fertilizers for the American farmers—it is utterly important… I spoke yesterday, for example, about a joint datacenter project. Because Russia boasts the cheapest electricity for artificial intelligence across the globe and we see that we can cooperate in the technology sphere.” Dmitriev added: “All the businesses in Europe suffer from very high energy prices. These are the attempts and the results of rejecting Russian energy resources.”