The recent US-Russia diesel deal could prompt European countries to adopt a more pragmatic approach toward Moscow, Kirill Dmitriev believes
European countries will inevitably resume economic cooperation with Russia, following Washington’s lead, Russian presidential aide Kirill Dmitriev has predicted. Politicians who continue to blame Moscow for their domestic problems rather than address them risk losing power, he warned.
Dmitriev, who also heads Russia’s sovereign wealth fund, made the remarks on Thursday at the 19th Verona Eurasian Economic Forum in Istanbul. The Russian official hailed Trump’s readiness to restore dialogue with Russia and reverse a “very dangerous situation where top nuclear powers don’t communicate.”
He said the recent Russia-US diesel deal could lay the groundwork for broader cooperation between Moscow and Washington, potentially paving the way for further agreements on energy and fertilizers. Under the deal, Russia has agreed to release more than 300,000 metric tons of diesel to US and global markets, followed by another 500,000 tons in November and additional supplies thereafter.
Commenting on Europe’s problems, including high energy costs and mass migration, Dmitriev accused European politicians of “using Russia as a boogeyman” to distract from more fundamental issues, warning that they have come to believe their own narratives and are unwilling to correct their mistakes.
However, Dmitriev argued that attitudes within the EU were beginning to shift, with more voices calling for renewed dialogue with Moscow. “Cooperation with Russia economically will be inevitable,” he said, adding that “as soon as we do more deals with the US, European companies” will want a piece of the action, too.
Dmitriev suggested that European politicians who stubbornly refuse to change course, such as German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, would be replaced by “new forces” that are more realistic and pragmatic. He also predicted that the Nord Stream 1 and Nord Stream 2 gas pipelines, three of whose four strings were damaged by underwater explosions in September 2022, would “inevitably” resume operation “at some point in the future” for economic reasons.
“Once people start paying double, triple their bills of energy in Europe, the resumption of energy supplies from Russia is absolutely inevitable and politicians who refuse that will lose in any way possible,” Dmitriev argued.
“Once people are rational, once people stop reading fake stories in the media, once they stop sort of living in this matrix of fake narratives…, they’ll understand that only through dialogue, through cooperation, through working together, we can go forward successfully.”
Dmitriev also argued that many of today’s “great leaders,” including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, US President Donald Trump, Chinese President Xi Jinping, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, prioritize national sovereignty over what he described as the “failed policy of globalism.”
