The New York Times reported, citing eight anonymous sources, that US negotiations with Russia on ending the war in Ukraine have widened to include a proposed sale of the international assets of Lukoil, Russia's largest private oil company. The Times values the transaction at about $20 billion. The Times describes it as a proposal under negotiation, not a finalised agreement.
According to people familiar with the meeting, cited by the Times, Russian President Vladimir Putin raised the deal himself on September 5 at the Kremlin with US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner. The Times reported that Putin framed it as a way of showing Russians they can do business with the United States. The envoys reportedly said they would pursue it. They believed it could build goodwill with the Kremlin and possibly lower global energy prices. That meeting followed a shuttle already under strain, as Crisis.Zone reported on September 4.
Who would buy, and why sanctions matter
The Times names a buyer group led by Todd Boehly, a US investor and co-owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. He gave $1 million to MAGA Inc., a pro-Trump political group, in December 2025. He gave another $1 million to Trump's inauguration through his investment firm.
Also named are the Qatari brothers Moutaz and Ramez Al-Khayyat, who have business ties to Kushner and Ivanka Trump, including a planned luxury resort in Albania. The third is Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Abu Dhabi's national security adviser and brother of the UAE president. A fund he controls holds a significant stake in World Liberty Financial, a Trump family-linked cryptocurrency company co-founded by Witkoff. He also oversees Lunate, an Abu Dhabi fund that is a major stakeholder in Kushner's private equity firm, Affinity Partners.
The assets include oil and gas fields abroad, refineries in Bulgaria and Romania, and thousands of gas stations, including in the United States. US sanctions imposed in October 2025 sharply depressed their value. The Times account says US approval of a sale would lift those sanctions and raise their value immediately. The Times reported that Witkoff and Kushner directly took part in negotiating the financial terms of a proposed US government investment through the US International Development Finance Corporation. Those terms include "a substantial upfront payment and profits interest for the United States."
Observers are reading: the four overlapping US roles in the Lukoil proposal, and why the Kremlin's push for pre-settlement commercial deals matters.
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What remains unresolved
The deal needs authorisation from both the US Treasury Department, which oversees sanctions enforcement, and the Kremlin. The Treasury has repeatedly extended sanctions-related arrangements while the sale is unresolved. The license that allows negotiations on the sale was last extended on September 18 and runs to October 22, 2026, with a warning that it can be withdrawn. A separate license for Lukoil's retail stations outside Russia runs to October 29.
Kyiv's position on the proposal is not known. After meeting the envoys in Kyiv on September 6, Zelenskyy said they had brought several new ideas, but that details remained confidential. Nothing in the available reporting establishes whether Lukoil was among them. Ukraine's General Staff said its forces struck oil facilities in the Samara and Volgograd regions on October 2, including Lukoil's Volgograd refinery. That came after Trump's September 14 claim that both sides had agreed to halt energy strikes, a claim Kyiv said it was unaware of.
It remains open whether a process with a commercial track that Kyiv is not reported to have designed can produce a settlement Kyiv accepts. The reporting does not yet say.
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