Officer Dmitriev: how a Kyiv-born financier became the main negotiator between Putin and Trump

On 18 February, Riyadh in Saudi Arabia hosted the first stage of talks between the delegations of Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin on the restoration of US-Russia relations and the formation of negotiating teams on the Russo-Ukrainian war. 

One of the Russian representatives at the meeting, where the parties agreed to keep negotiating and make preparations for a meeting between Trump and Putin, was 49-year-old Kirill Dmitriev, a native of Kyiv, a graduate of Stanford and Harvard universities, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF) and a close associate of the Russian ruler.

Bloomberg describes Dmitriev, as well as Putin's foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov and Sergei Naryshkin, Head of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, as "heavyweights". Nonetheless, Dmitriev has a key role in unofficial contacts with Trump's team.

How did Dmitriev go from attending a school specialising in physics and mathematics in Kyiv, to gaining degrees from the world's most prestigious universities, protection from the FSB, and the status of Kremlin fixer and Putin envoy? How did his friendship with Putin’s daughter help him do this, and why did he fail in his bid to roll out Sputnik V, Russia's Covid-19 vaccine, on a global level?

Kyiv, education in the US, Pinchuk's investment fund and military intelligence ID

Kirill Dmitriev was born in 1975 to a Ukrainian family of biologists. He studied at a school specialising in physics and mathematics and wanted to pursue further education in the United States. In the early 1990s, Dmitriev met an American family who had come to Kyiv on a "citizen diplomacy" programme. They told him what a foreigner needed to do to become a student in the United States.

Dmitriev first enrolled at Foothill College in California, and two years later, he became a student at Stanford University. He graduated with honours in 1996 with a bachelor's degree in economics.

"I had no relatives in the US, and I was one of the few foreign students to receive a full scholarship for the entire duration of my studies," Dmitriev later said, while he was already the head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund.

After receiving a prestigious education, Putin's future envoy began working in New York at Goldman Sachs, and later at the management consultancy firm, McKinsey, which paid for his education at Harvard Business School. There, he received an MBA degree, also with honours.

In an interview, he said that after graduation, both McKinsey and Goldman Sachs offered him jobs. However, Dmitriev decided to build his career in Russia.

Read also: What's going on with the Russian economy? 

In 2000, Dmitriev, then aged 25, moved to Moscow and became deputy CEO of the IT company IBS, prompting the first Russian media articles about him.

In an interview with Russian newspaper Kommersant, IBS founder Anatoly Karachinsky argued that it was time for Russian expatriates to come back home, that the government was "finally trying to have a conversation with business", that "it was time to become a rich country" and that "we need the help of the best expats". And he mentioned Dmitriev specifically.

After moving to Moscow, Dmitriev moved into a two-room apartment and bought a second-hand Land Rover. He had a Ukrainian-issued passport, but registered the car with a Russian officer's licence No. AM1198939, issued in 2000.

Identity cards with similar letters and numbers were issued to graduates of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service Academy and GRU (foreign military intelligence service) officers. The journalists did not figure out how a Ukrainian citizen came to have such a document, but their sources said that it was not difficult for a person with connections to obtain such a thing.

Two years later, "Officer" Dmitriev became an investment director at Delta Private Equity, a division of the US-Russia Investment Fund (TUSRIF) created under Bill Clinton. The latter was later transformed into the US-Russia Foundation (USRF) and was declared an "undesirable organisation" by Russia in 2015.

Dmitriev worked at Delta Private Equity until 2007, dealing with major transactions, including the sale of TV-3 to ProfMedia Holding for US$530 million.

In 2007, Dmitriev returned to Ukraine and headed Victor Pinchuk's Icon Private Equity investment fund, which had capital of about US$1 billion and invested in Russia. There, he completed a number of major deals: the sale of Delta Bank to General Electric, Delta Credit to Société Générale, and shares in STS Media to Fidelity Investments.

In 2010, Dmitriev was named one of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders in Davos. A year later, he returned to Russia to head the newly created Russian Direct Investment Fund.

Later, when he became part of Putin's inner circle, Dmitriev had this to say about Ukraine: "There were so-called democratic changes there as a result of the Orange Revolution, which led to a three- to fourfold increase in corruption, to a wild battle between these democratic clans, which were united only at the beginning of the struggle, and after they came to power, they began to devour others and each other and lost as a result. The democratic idea in Ukraine has been largely discredited thanks to the Orange Revolution."

A friend of Putin's daughter and a Kremlin investor

Both the Russian and British media are unanimous: Dmitriev's finest hour in Russia came after he met and then married Natalia Popova, a close friend and business partner of Putin's daughter Yekaterina Tikhonova.

"Popova used to live with her parents in Dedovsk, a town 40 kilometres from Moscow, working as a freelance journalist for Komsomolskaya Pravda, a clerk at Impexbank and enjoying her Mitsubishi Carisma, which she bought on credit. But after meeting Putin's daughter, her life took a turn for the better," The Insider wrote.

Popova and Tikhonova studied together at Moscow State University. By this time Popova had become the deputy to Putin's daughter at the Innopraktika Foundation. She said that Tikhonova invited her to take on the role. Dmitriev is a member of the foundation's board of trustees.

His wife's friendship with Tikhonova made Dmitriev a powerful figure in the Kremlin. Even before the wedding, Popova introduced her fiancé to Putin's daughter and her then-husband, Kirill Shamalov, who introduced him to Sergei Ivanov, the then-head of President Dmitry Medvedev's administration, who took Dmitriev under his wing.

The Russian government then announced a plan to modernise the economy, improve the investment climate and create an institution of investment commissioners. Elvira Nabiullina, then head of the Russian Ministry of Economic Development, was looking for a person to head a state investment fund with foreign participation.

"I saw that he was sociable, spoke excellent English, had great connections and was professionally versed in the investment business," recollected Vladimir Dmitriev (no relation), the former head of VEB.RF (Russia’s national economic development institution) who was one of the fund initiators.

Pinchuk also recommended Dmitriev. The interview in the Kremlin went well, and in 2011 he became the head of the RDIF, which has a statutory fund of US$10 billion.

"President Medvedev and Prime Minister Putin supported the project and set the task of creating a model that would be the result of an open dialogue with the world's leading investors and would enjoy their support," Kirill Dmitriev boasted.

He was described in the Kremlin as a "Harvard boy" with excellent communication skills: "It was clear that he could come to an agreement with anyone."

Gradually, the non-public fund, whose activities were known either from Dmitriev's statements or from media investigations, became important to the Kremlin as an element of attracting investment to Russia and improving relations with the countries of the Global South – in particular, China, the UAE and Saudi Arabia.

Chinese and American companies invested US$650 million in assets listed on the Moscow Stock Exchange. Later, a joint Russian-Chinese investment fund was established, and the Kuwait Investment Authority began cooperating with the RDIF, investing over US$1 billion in Russian infrastructure projects. In 2023, Dmitriev promised that the fund and Saudi Arabia would invest over RUB 1 trillion (about US$11.2 billion) in Russia’s economy.

Dmitriev is valued in the Kremlin, having headed the RDIF for almost 15 years. He also has good connections abroad: French President Emmanuel Macron awarded Dmitriev the title of Knight of the Legion of Honour, while Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman awarded him with the King Abdulaziz Second-Class Order of Merit, the highest award of the Kingdom. Dmitriev also accompanied Putin during his visits to Abu Dhabi and Riyadh in 2023.

Dmitriev sits on the supervisory boards of Russia’s largest state-owned companies: Gazprombank, Rostelecom, Alrosa, Transneft and Russian Railways.

Dmitriev was not just friends with Tikhonova’s theusbn-hand but also used their friendship for mutual business interests, "leaking" information about upcoming RDIF deals. In 2012, he passed confidential information to Shamalov about RDIF’s plans to acquire a stake in Rostelecom’s capital.

The media reported on this in August 2013, and the deal was closed in October. Between July and October, Rostelecom’s shares rose by 30%. Three years later, the fund and other investors poured US$3.3 billion into the ZapSibNeftekhim project of Sibur, Russia’s leading petrochemical complex. At that time, Shamalov owned 21% of Sibur.

In 2018, Putin’s daughter and Shamalov divorced. Her new partner was dancer Igor Zelensky. She flew to Munich to see him on an RDIF private jet.

The ideologue of Sputnik V

One of the most well-known projects under Dmitriev’s leadership is the Russian Covid-19 vaccine Sputnik V. The RDIF became a strategic investor in its development, and Dmitriev actively promoted it.

He studied the criteria for submitting a Nobel Prize application to nominate the vaccine’s developer, the Gamaleya Research Institute of Epidemiology and Microbiology, and called for improved US-Russia relations for the sake of defeating the coronavirus. Latvia-based Russian media outlet Meduza, citing a former RDIF employee, wrote that "Kirill felt like a messiah; for him, spreading the vaccine worldwide was an evangelical, missionary task." 

Russia hoped Sputnik V would serve as a form of "soft power". Dmitriev frequently spoke with Western media, calling the vaccine the safest and most effective, while "exposing an information campaign" against Sputnik V, blaming global pharmaceutical giants and "anti-Russian political circles".

However, the vaccine failed to gain global recognition or approval from the World Health Organisation (WHO). Moreover, WHO identified issues with cross-contamination and sterility at the Sputnik V production plant.

Sanctions and the Kremlin’s chief fixer

In 2023, The Insider called Dmitriev "the brightest figure on the Kremlin’s lobbying front" and one of those with "direct access to Putin".

The Insider reported that Dmitriev’s influential patron was Lieutenant General Andrey Chobotov of the FSB, Chief of the Presidential Anti-Corruption Directorate, who had served with Sergei Ivanov, former Kremlin chief of staff. Nearly all Kremlin and security services doors were open to Dmitriev thanks to such connections.

"You can solve any problem with the help of Kirill, but getting an appointment with him is extremely difficult; you have to contact his wife or acquaintances," said a Moscow businessman.

Read also: Russia has legalised cryptocurrencies. Will this help the Russians evade Western sanctions?

Tikhonova's divorce from Shamalov and the resignations of Ivanov and Chobotov did not affect Dmitriev’s status. He now operates through Anton Vaino, Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office, who arranges private meetings with Putin.

"Dmitriev has plenty to discuss with Putin. Kirill reports on how he spends the National Wealth Fund money channelled into the RDIF," The Insider wrote. "Big business, banks, and Arab and Chinese investors approach him with issues. Some were 'cheated' or had something forcibly taken from them. There was the case of American investor Michael Calvey’s arrest. The fact that he was released was largely thanks to Dmitriev."

However, this did not prevent the US from imposing sanctions on Dmitriev and the RDIF immediately after the full-scale war began. He is also on sanctions lists in Canada, the UK, Australia and other countries. The US Treasury reported that Dmitriev used his ties to American universities and business circles to advance Russia’s interests.

A "bridge" for contact with Trump

Dmitriev was mentioned in US Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report on Russian interference in the 2016 US election, which resulted in Trump’s victory.

Mueller reported that in January 2017, shortly before Trump’s inauguration, Dmitriev met Erik Prince, a Trump supporter and founder of the private military company Blackwater, to establish a secret back channel between the White House and the Kremlin.

That same year, Dmitriev met with Trump’s adviser Anthony Scaramucci at the economic forum in Davos. Later, CNN reported that this meeting was being investigated by the US Senate, but the media retracted the story the next day due to non-compliance with "editorial standards", following which three of its journalists resigned.

In 2020, The Daily Beast reported that Dmitriev had been in contact with Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and his close friend, financier Rick Gerson, for over three years. They worked on a "reconciliation plan for United States-Russia relations" – a task personally assigned to Dmitriev by Putin. Dmitriev referred to Putin as "the boss" in correspondence with the Americans.

Following Trump’s return to the White House, Dmitriev is once again playing a key diplomatic role in relations between the US, Russia and Saudi Arabia, which hosted delegation talks on 18 February.

Dmitriev’s first public move was the 11 February exchange of former American diplomat and teacher Marc Fogel for Russian Alexander Vinnik, who had been convicted in the US of money laundering. Reuters reported that Dmitriev participated in negotiations with the Americans and Saudis over the exchange.

This was later confirmed by Trump’s special envoy Steven Witkoff: "There’s a gentleman from Russia, his name is Kirill, and he had a lot to do with this. He was important, he was an important interlocutor bridging the two sides."

Subsequently, Putin included Dmitriev in a team of "heavyweights" for negotiations on the war in Ukraine, alongside his aide Yuri Ushakov and Sergei Naryshkin, Director of the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service. Moreover, Dmitriev currently plays a key role in the unofficial communication channel with White House representatives.

Dmitriev’s press service did not comment on his participation in the negotiation group, but soon he arrived in Riyadh as part of the Russian delegation and actively engaged with American media. Although he was not present in the negotiation room, his work behind the scenes highlights his role in the economic aspects of the talks.

Dmitriev publicly announced that the Kremlin is offering Trump a deal on Russian natural resources. He said that Russia believes that American oil companies could return to the country. Russia is also interested in joint projects with the US in the Arctic.

Author: Oleksiy Pavlysh

Translation: Anna Kybukevych, Myroslava Zavadska

Editing: Shoël Stadlen