The meeting between Kirill Dmitriev and Steve Witkoff was apparently the first time in years that a senior Russian official had traveled to the U.S. for talks with an American counterpart.

WASHINGTON—A top Kremlin envoy completed two days of talks with President Trump’s Russia negotiator at the White House on Thursday, the first high-level bilateral meeting in the U.S. since before the Ukraine invasion in 2022.

The absence of Russia on the president’s new list of countries that he’ll hit with steep tariffs did not go unnoticed on social media. Critics were quick to accuse Trump of kowtowing to Russian President Vladimir Putin, whom Trump has for years expressed his admiration of.