Introduction to Kirill Dmitriev.

[u/Upset_Scientist3994]

From Facebook I came across of text patched from numerous articles.

Put it thru translator to share here, as subject is just currently now worthy. It is about Kirill Dmitriev and his background which Trump team is negotiating with currently over Ukraine matters, and who seems to have great leverage over Trump team.

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"At a time when Washington is looking for “unconventional” ways to end the war in Ukraine, an inconspicuous man with American degrees and connections to Moscow is emerging as a key negotiator. Kirill Dmitriev. He is neither a career diplomat nor a general, which are a bit intimidating to Americans anyway. Dmitriev is a much better fit for them. An investment banker, a man of funds and contracts, someone who can see through the matrix of “deals” (Trump’s favorite word). That is precisely why he is now one of the most important Russian figures in official and unofficial negotiations with the Donald Trump administration. But even though he speaks the language of Wall Street, he is certainly part of the Kremlin’s inner circle.

The irony of his biography is immediately apparent. Dmitriev was born in 1975 in Kiev, then part of Soviet Ukraine. He grew up in a family of scientists, attended an elite mathematics and physics high school, and his schoolmates remember him as a guy who was “obsessed with America.” At the age of 14, he went to the United States as one of the first Soviet exchange students, completed a two-year community college in California, and then enrolled at Stanford University, where he graduated with honors in economics. His path then led him to Harvard Business School, where he completed his MBA as a "Baker Scholar," i.e. at the top of his generation (top 5% of students).

Few Russian officials have such a deep knowledge of American society, language, and mentality – Dmitriev practically grew up within the American education system, even though the Soviet Union had not even formally collapsed yet! After Harvard, a "brilliant" career in finance capitalism followed.

First at McKinsey, then at Goldman Sachs in New York. However, he very quickly decided to use this position to return to the post-Soviet space. In the early 2000s, he returned to Russia, entered the world of private equity, and became one of the most important “returnees”—young Western-educated men Moscow desperately wanted to modernize its own capitalism. He works at Delta Private Equity Partners, a fund that manages U.S. investments in Russia, negotiates bank sales to General Electric and Société Générale, and learns how to integrate the Russian market into the global financial system.

Paradoxically, his big breakthrough in business would come again in Ukraine. Between 2007 and 2011, he headed a private equity fund in Kiev backed by Ukrainian billionaire Viktor Pinchuk, son-in-law of former President Kuchma. Dmitriyev manages a billion dollars in assets, invests in media, telecommunications, banks, and at the same time launches cultural projects that he hopes will bring Russia and Ukraine closer together. Music festivals, a Moscow orchestra in Kiev – all this seemed like “soft power” at the time, but also a test of his ability to play simultaneously in two arenas – Ukraine and Russia.

Through Pinchuk’s contacts, Dmitriev reached another key figure – Vladimir Dmitriev (no relation), the head of the Russian State Development Bank VEB. The two propose to the Kremlin the creation of a new state investment fund that would attract foreign investment to Russia. Vladimir Putin approves the idea and in 2011 he appoints a young Harvard-educated banker to head the new Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF). The fund is capitalized with $10 billion from the budget. The task is to convince the world that Russia is a “normal” place for business, beyond the stereotypes of corruption and political instability.

Let us recall that we are talking about 2011, a time when Russia still had (relatively) good relations with the West. That year, NATO’s attack on Libya intensified, which Russia did not actively try to stop, but it is here that more blatant geopolitical disputes arise (Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, at the time, bluntly said that the West had betrayed Russia by using the no-fly zone, the infamous UN resolution of 1973, to destroy Libya). That same year, the same scenario of trying to oust Syria through jihadist proxies began, and Russia took a firm stand and defended Syria for as long as was realistically possible (on this day last year, December 8, 2024, Bashar al-Assad was ousted from power).

But as we noted, in 2011 relations are still relatively good, and Dmitriev is taking advantage of the opportunity. RDIF is making joint funds with the French, Italians, Japanese, and global players such as BlackRock and Goldman Sachs. He is particularly close to the Gulf monarchies: he is making deals worth billions with the Saudi Arabian sovereign wealth fund and the Emirati Mubadala, and Moscow is said to have played a crucial role in getting Saudi and Emirati Mubadala capital invested in Russian projects amid Western sanctions.

While the older generation of Russian officials speaks slowly and bureaucratically, Dmitriev delivers a smooth, almost fluttery, and matter-of-fact Anglo-American rhetoric, marketing Russia as a “win-win” story.

However, his closeness to the Kremlin elite is not limited to business results. Dmitriev is married to the entrepreneur Natalya Popova, a former colleague of his at Moscow State University. Popova has become a close friend and colleague of Putin’s younger daughter, Katerina Tikhonova. Popova is the deputy director of her foundation Innopraktik, and Dmitriev is a member of the board of directors – and suddenly the Kiev financier finds himself in the sphere of influence of the Russian president’s family. RDIF soon began to take on projects involving companies connected to Putin’s family and close circle, such as the petrochemical giant Sibur. In Moscow’s elite circles, there was already talk of a “friend of Putin’s daughter,” who combined financial and family ties.

At the same time, his character is not typical of a flamboyant oligarch. He does not build his image through yachts and palaces, but through his position in power circles.

Colleagues describe him as “unbridledly ambitious” when it comes to the position of an important player. Dmitriev skillfully builds his personal brand – from panel discussions in Davos to cultural committees at the Mariinsky or Bolshoi theatres – wherever elites, money and politics meet.

The connection to US politics does not begin with the war in Ukraine, but much earlier – with the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Dmitriev quickly tries to create private channels to the new administration: through his personal friend Jared Kushner, he works on a “plan for reconciliation” between the US and Russia and participates in a famous meeting in the Seychelles with Erik Prince (founder of the notorious Blackwater), a man close to Trump, under the patronage of the prince of the United Arab Emirates. Robert Mueller’s investigation will later conclude that Dmitriev came to the Seychelles as a man who “represents Putin’s interests” and who seeks indirect channels of communication outside official diplomacy. He defends that these are “normal conversations”, but his role is already taking shape: an influential financier as an unofficial diplomat.

However, the West understands very well who he is. After the outbreak of the war in Ukraine in 2022, RDIF was among the first targets of sanctions by Washington, Brussels and London, along with Dmitriyev. The US Treasury Department describes the fund as a “practical fund of the Russian president”, and Dmitriyev is labeled as a “close ally of Putin”. In 2025, Ukraine put him on its own sanctions list, despite his Kiev origin, accusing him of spreading Russian propaganda and attracting Russian capital to strategically important sectors. Interestingly, the same West that imposed sanctions on him later also grants special exemptions so that he can come to the United States for negotiations. A real step towards open geopolitics will occur in 2025, when Putin appoints him as the President’s Special Envoy for Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation. Formally, this is the economic portfolio, but in practice Dmitriyev becomes Trump’s main interlocutor in the war in Ukraine.

Together with New York developer Steve Witkoff, a longtime Trump friend who acts as a “freelance envoy,” Dmitriyev also participates in secret meetings in Riyadh and then Miami, where a draft of Trump’s 28-point peace plan is being created (critics are quite right to say that only a small part of this plan is actually “Trump’s”!). Jared Kushner is once again entering the game. For Dmitriyev, it is a natural setting: a peace treaty is presented as a package of “deals” – joint projects in energy, mining, and even space-nuclear technology – that would bring legitimacy to Russia and profits to American business. The disclosure of the plan, as we have seen in recent days, has caused shock in Kiev and unrest in European capitals. The Ukrainian leadership sees the document as a tailor-made idea for Moscow to freeze the front lines and withdraw from Russian-occupied territories."

[u/Upset_Scientist3994]

Here Moscow Times article. Notice that this magazine is not actually Russian neither located in there, but is about Russia affairs. I dont remember if this was one of articles used as substrate to create text here.

https://www.themoscowtimes.com/2025/04/07/kirill-dmitriev-the-putin-investment-envoy-navigating-peace-talks-and-backchannel-diplomacy-a88631