Putin's Man in the Middle: The Investment Banker in Ukraine Talks

A man who can walk into a room and make everyone listen. This man is Kirill Dmitriev, a Russian investment banker with a strong American background. He's not just any banker; he's a key player in the talks between Russia and the U. S. about ending the war in Ukraine. Dmitriev, who's 49 years old, has a unique story. He studied at Harvard and Stanford, worked at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey, and now he's trying to secure the best deal for one man: President Vladimir Putin. Dmitriev is fluent in English and is married to a close friend of Putin's daughter. This makes him a trusted confidante of the Russian leader. He's been given the task of running the country's sovereign wealth fund and has been a key player in recent high-level talks in Saudi Arabia. These talks were about ending the war in Ukraine. Dmitriev was involved in a meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov, Putin's foreign policy adviser, and an American delegation led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He also attended separate meetings in Riyadh and made an argument that might appeal to President Donald Trump — that sanctions had cost U. S. companies billions of dollars. Dmitriev has already courted the new administration in the White House by playing a crucial role in facilitating the prisoner swap that led to the release of Marc Fogel, three and a half years after a Russian court handed him a 14-year jail sentence for a minor medical cannabis infraction. Fogel, a 63-year-old teacher from Pennsylvania, flew back to the U. S. last week with Trump’s special envoy to the Middle East, Steve Witkoff, who credited a man called “Kirill” for making the deal. Saudi Arabia's Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was also heavily involved in the deal to secure Fogel's release, according to a senior Saudi official who credited Dmitriev as “absolutely the go-to” and “highly active” in the negotiations surrounding the exchange, which saw convicted money launderer Alexander Vinnik return to Russia. Dmitriev has long established ties with the Saudi leader and, in October 2019, he was awarded the King Abdulaziz Second-Class Order of Merit, the kingdom’s highest award, for his work to strengthen cooperation between Russia and Saudi Arabia after he helped secure an oil price agreement under the expanded OPEC+ producers’ forum. Dmitriev's success has come as little surprise to those who have tracked his career. Born in what is now Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, but was then part of the Soviet Union, as a teenager Dmitriev took part of a high-school exchange with the U. S. , where he later returned to earn a bachelor’s degree at Stanford University and an MBA at Harvard. In 2009 he was a “young global leader” at the World Economic Forum. He went on to work in Ukraine before moving back to Russia, where American business channels CNBC and Bloomberg would feature him because of his expertise on local markets. Putin then tapped him up to head the Russian Direct Investment Fund, which was created in 2011 to facilitate foreign investment. Dmitriev is described as “extraordinarily smart” by a senior U. S. finance executive. He can move in Western circles “with ease. ” While Dmitriev was “very pro-American and pro-Western, ” he is “ultimately totally loyal and patriotic to Russia” and Putin. In his role, he subsequently championed his country and encouraged investment in the face of hostility about the Russian annexation of Crimea. He also played a part in early contacts with the U. S. when Trump was first elected president in 2016. Among the people he met was Erik Prince, the founder of the now defunct Blackwater security firm and a supporter of Trump’s 2016 presidential run. Their secret meeting in the Four Seasons Hotel in the Seychelles, on Jan. 11, 2017, was featured in special counsel Robert Mueller’s report into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, which said Dmitriev sought an introduction to a Trump transition team member in order to begin improving U. S. -Russia ties. Two years later, as Covid-19 pandemic took hold, Dmitriev worked to promote Russia’s Sputnik V coronavirus vaccine. But after Putin ordered the full-scale invasion of Ukraine on Feb. 24, 2022, Dmitriev seemed to disappear from public view in the West, although he routinely attended major events in Russia and met Putin on several occasions. He also made regular media appearances in his homeland. Four days after Russian forces crossed into Ukraine, the U. S. Department of the Treasury sanctioned Dmitriev, calling him a “close associate of Putin. ” His wife, Natalya Popova, “believed to be close to one of Putin’s daughters, Katerina Tikhonova, ” was also sanctioned. But after Trump was elected again last year, Dmitriev re-entered the spotlight praising the president’s “decisive leadership” as he issued a series of executive orders. The week before Trump’s inauguration he met with Putin to talk about Russian investments, according to the Kremlin’s website. After the ceasefire talks in Riyadh, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said that both countries had agreed to re-establish “the functionality of our respective missions in Washington and Moscow” and that Washington would create a high-level team to work on a path to ending the war in Ukraine. Dmitriev was there to discuss “economic issues, ” according to Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser. Whether those discussions included the lifting of American sanctions is unclear, but Fedorov, Russia’s former deputy foreign minister, was convinced that he would eventually achieve that goal. “When he is given a task, he does it, ” he said.