Putin Offered Trump's Envoys the Sale of Lukoil's Foreign Assets, NYT Reports. Buying Consortium Has Ties to Kushner and Witkoff Partners

US–Russia peace talks on Ukraine have reportedly expanded to include a multibillion-dollar deal: the sale of foreign assets belonging to the Russian oil company Lukoil, according to The New York Times. Vladimir Putin personally opened the topic on September 5 at the Kremlin, during a meeting with Trump's envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, according to three sources cited by the paper. The main buying consortium is made up of an American billionaire and Trump supporter, two Persian Gulf groups that have done business with Kushner or the Witkoff family, and a US government agency. The New York Times ↗

What The New York Times found

The paper bases its findings on eight unnamed people familiar with the talks, which have lasted several months. According to one of them, Putin proposed completing the deal as proof to Russians that business with the United States is possible again. American negotiators replied that they would work on it, because they saw in it a way to win the goodwill of the Kremlin and at the same time push down energy prices. The NYT also writes that it has no indication that Witkoff or Kushner would personally profit from the deal. Digi24 ↗

The portfolio, which Lukoil itself valued at the beginning of the year at $20 billion, includes oil fields in Cameroon and Iraq, refineries in Bulgaria and Romania, a stake in the Dutch Zeeland refinery, and networks of gas stations in Europe and the US. Lukoil must sell it since Washington imposed sanctions on the company a year ago. The NYT does not state the price or the structure of the proposed deal. Digi24 ↗

Washington's approval would lift the sanctions from the assets, and their value would immediately rise, which makes the deal an attractive opportunity for any buyer. Kyiv Post ↗

An unnamed senior administration official confirmed to the paper that Witkoff and Kushner played a direct role in negotiating the financial terms under which the US government will enter the deal. These terms are meant to secure a substantial upfront payment and a share of the profits for the United States. A Witkoff spokeswoman rejected the conflict-of-interest concern, saying he has no financial interest in the matter. Digi24 ↗

Who wants to buy Lukoil

The offer is led by Todd Boehly, co-owner of the baseball team Los Angeles Dodgers, who in December 2025 donated one million dollars to the MAGA Inc. committee and another million through his company to Trump's inauguration. Another major shareholder is said to be the Qatari conglomerate of brothers Moutaz and Ramez Al-Khayyat, who are partners of Kushner and Ivanka Trump in a luxury resort in southern Albania. The third is a fund from the United Arab Emirates controlled by Sheikh Tahnoon bin Zayed Al Nahyan, the national security adviser, with which a fund that bought a large stake in the Trump family's crypto company World Liberty Financial is also linked. Index.hr ↗

The Financial Times published the composition of the consortium at the end of September. The US government is involved through the government agency DFC (U.S. International Development Finance Corporation), which invests in projects abroad. Financial Times ↗ Boehly's group moved ahead only in the last few months, when Washington's approval of the offer from the Carlyle fund stalled. Carlyle had reached a preliminary agreement with Lukoil as early as January. Digi24 ↗ According to the FT's September report, which the agency SeeNews cited, Carlyle has already received the green light from the Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC), but it still lacks the final approval of Trump's administration. SeeNews ↗

Reuters captured the Carlyle–Lukoil agreement in an 80-second English-language video on January 29. At that time, it was still expected that this fund would buy most of the foreign assets.

How it is read where the refineries stand

Romania's Digi24 took over the report almost in full and added what concerns Romania: Lukoil owns the Petrotel refinery in Ploiești there, a network of gas stations, and an 87.8 percent stake in the Trident Black Sea field, the rest of which belongs to the state-owned Romgaz. Digi24 ↗ However, Petrotel has not processed oil since October 2025, and on August 26 it entered insolvency. According to the Romanian portal Găzarul, its administrator is asking Washington for a license that would allow the refinery to restart. Găzarul ↗

The Bulgarian daily 24 Chasa points out that Burgas is home to the country's only refinery, and that a separate American license for Lukoil's Bulgarian subsidiaries runs until October 29. Their special business administrator, Evgeni Simeonov, already said in September that they have no information about the sale of the parent company. 24 Chasa ↗

Greece's Proto Thema points to a paradox that disappears in American headlines: the US government is at the same time the authority that must approve the sale and a potential investor in one of the competing offers. Regarding the links to Trump's circle, it adds a caveat (editorial translation): "The existence of these ties does not mean that Trump, Witkoff, or Kushner are gaining a personal stake in the sale of Lukoil, but it creates a network of existing financial relationships between people who today stand on both sides of the same large transaction." Proto Thema ↗

The Ukrainian Kyiv Post frames the story as an extension of the peace talks into a business channel, and points out that, according to the NYT, Putin presented the deal as a signal to Russia's business elite. Finland's Yle briefly sums up that completion of the deal is uncertain, because it needs the approval of both Washington and the Kremlin. Yle ↗

Why this matters for Slovakia

Lukoil is not a distant company for Slovak readers. In the summer of 2024, Ukraine extended sanctions to its transit, and Lukoil stopped sending oil through the southern branch of the Druzhba pipeline to Slovakia and Hungary. The Polish analytical center OSW then described it as the largest supplier of Russian oil to both countries. OSW ↗ At that time, according to industry sources cited by Reuters, Slovakia and Hungary shared about 900,000 tons of Russian oil per month equally. The Moscow Times ↗

According to the NYT, Lukoil's European refineries produce diesel and jet fuel, which have been in short supply since the start of the war with Iran, and this is exactly what gives Trump an argument for the deal. Digi24 ↗ Who will own them and under what conditions could therefore affect fuel prices in the region. The US Treasury license that permits the sale talks expires on October 22 and can be revoked at any time. FesenkoLaw ↗

The limits of this view

The whole story rests on a single investigative text with anonymous sources. The media that picked it up on Saturday cite the NYT and did not bring their own verification. According to The Moscow Times, the White House, the Treasury Department, and Lukoil did not respond to requests for comment outside office hours. The Moscow Times ↗ The deal is not finished, and nothing is known about its price or structure. Moreover, according to the NYT, Lukoil, which is formally private, is seen in Moscow as a company whose sale is decided by Putin, so a deal spanning continents ultimately comes down to a decision by Putin and Trump. Digi24 ↗

What hotinfo is watching

*Lead photo: Lukoil gas station in Zabrze, Poland, September 2018. Photo by MichalPL, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0.*