Ukraine peace talks widen to include multibillion-dollar Lukoil oil deal, report says
Talks between the United States and Russia on ending the war in Ukraine have expanded to include a multibillion-dollar oil deal, the New York Times reported on Saturday (October 3, 2026), citing people familiar with the discussions.
According to the report, the proposed transaction centres on assets owned by Lukoil, one of Russia's largest energy companies, including oil fields, refineries and petrol stations in several countries. Any such deal would be contingent on approval from both the United States government and the Kremlin, the newspaper said.
The group said to be pursuing the deal includes American investor and billionaire Todd Boehly, two West Asian business groups that have previously done business with Jared Kushner or the family of Steve Witkoff, and an arm of the United States government, according to the report. Mr Witkoff and Mr Kushner have served as the administration's principal interlocutors with Moscow during the current round of diplomacy.
The New York Times reported that Russian President Vladimir Putin raised the proposal during a September 5 meeting with Mr Witkoff and Mr Kushner at the Kremlin. Citing a person familiar with that meeting, the newspaper said Mr Putin proposed completing the deal as a way to demonstrate to Russians that they could do business with the United States.
The White House, the US Treasury Department and Lukoil did not respond to requests for comment made outside regular business hours. The report could not be independently verified.
The disclosure, if confirmed, would place a large commercial transaction alongside a diplomatic process aimed at halting Europe's largest land war in decades. Lukoil is a privately held Russian company, but its operations have been affected by the wide-ranging sanctions imposed by the United States, the European Union and their allies after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Any arrangement touching the company's international assets would run into that sanctions architecture, and unwinding or waiving those measures would require deliberate policy decisions in Washington and among allied capitals.
The reported structure of the deal — private investors with personal or business ties to the negotiators, alongside a government entity — is likely to attract scrutiny from lawmakers and ethics observers in Washington, who have previously questioned the blending of diplomacy and private commercial interest. Under US law, officials are expected to avoid participating in matters in which they or their close associates hold a financial interest.
Details that remain unclear from the report include the value of the transaction, which specific Lukoil assets are involved, how the US government arm would participate, and what, if anything, Russia would receive in return beyond the stated aim of signalling that business with the United States is possible.
Ukraine's government has consistently held that any easing of pressure on Moscow should be tied to concrete security guarantees and progress on the battlefield and at the negotiating table. Kyiv has not publicly commented on the reported oil proposal.
It is not unusual for peace negotiations to touch on economic questions, including sanctions relief, reconstruction funding and energy supplies. What distinguishes this report is the scale of the commercial interest described and the involvement of individuals connected to the US negotiators themselves.
Readers should note the distinction between what has been reported and what has been confirmed. The account rests on unnamed sources cited by a single newspaper. Officials in Washington and Moscow, and Lukoil, have so far said nothing on the record. Until that changes, the oil deal remains a reported proposal within a diplomatic process, not an agreed outcome.
