Russian President Vladimir Putin's special envoy for investment and economic cooperation Kirill Dmitriev said on Monday at an investment conference in Saudi Arabia that the war in Ukraine could end within a year, Reuters reported, BTA reported.
Dmitriev made the remarks after meetings in the United States over the weekend with representatives of President Donald Trump's administration. His long-planned visit to Washington followed the announcement of US sanctions against "Lukoil" in the middle of last week. and Rosneft, as well as the postponed plans for a meeting between Trump and Putin in Budapest.
"We are convinced that we are on the path to peace and as peacemakers we must make it happen," Dmitriev, who also heads the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), told an audience in the Saudi capital Riyadh.
When asked if peace in Ukraine could be achieved within a year, Dmitriev replied: "I believe it can."
During his visit to the United States over the weekend, Dmitriev said that Moscow and Washington were close to finding a diplomatic solution to end the war in Ukraine.
At the conference in Riyadh, Dmitriev praised cooperation between the United States, Saudi Arabia and Russia as the world's largest holders of natural resources and said that such cooperation would make the world more secure. "Right now people are focused on the regional conflict that exists around Russia, but we don't want it to escalate into a larger conflict. And that's why we have to do better than we have done so far, not worse," he stressed.