Donald Trump is offering Vladimir Putin mind-bogglingly favorable concessions to make a deal, but a Russian czar can’t be seen as a deal-maker. After a three-year war he has promoted as a holy crusade, hundreds of thousands of casualties, and relatively modest gains on the battlefield, Putin can’t very well bargain with the country that provided weapons and intelligence to wipe out his troops. Even for Putin, there are risks to allowing Washington to broker peace.
But the Russian leader has a deal-maker of his own, someone who can translate imperial Russian into the language of Trump World—Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, one of Putin’s closest confidants, and the country’s pre-eminent finance bro.
