Russia’s top economic envoy has arrived in the United States for “official” talks just days after President Donald Trump announced tough new sanctions on Russia, sources with knowledge of the visit have exclusively told CNN.

Kirill Dmitriev, the head of the Russian sovereign wealth fund (RDIF) and a Kremlin special envoy, is expected to meet Trump administration officials “to continue discussions about the US-Russia relationship,” according to the sources.

The visit comes amid growing US frustration over the Kremlin’s refusal to end its war in Ukraine and after Trump said he had “canceled” a planned summit with his Kremlin counterpart, Vladimir Putin. The Trump administration on Wednesday imposed sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil as it called on Moscow to agree to an immediate ceasefire in the war with Ukraine.

Putin said the sanctions will have little impact on the Russian economy, describing them as an attempt to put pressure on Moscow.

“No self-respecting country ever does anything under pressure,” he said on Thursday.

The Russian leader said that, in a conversation with Trump, he had warned that the sanctions would impact global oil prices, including in the US.

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Dmitriev – who has been a prominent Kremlin advocate for closer economic cooperation between Russia and the United States – recently proposed the construction of a “Trump-Putin” tunnel between Alaska and the Russian Far East.

Born in Soviet-era Ukraine and educated at Harvard and Stanford in the US, Dmitriev worked as a consultant at American consultancy firm McKinsey and as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs.

After Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, Dmitriev was sanctioned by the US Treasury Department, which designated him a “close associate of Putin” and his family.