Kirill Dmitriev

Kirill Alexandrovich Dmitriev (; born 12 April 1975) is the CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), an at least $10 billion sovereign wealth fund created by the Russian government to co-invest in the Russian economy.

Dmitriev was born in Soviet Ukraine, later completing his education and jumpstarting his career in the United States between the ages of 14 and 27. Upon moving to Russia, he expanded his financier activities before helming RDIF. In February 2022, both Kirill Dmitriev and RDIF were sanctioned by the United States Treasury, following the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Under Dmitriev's leadership RDIF claims to be the first state owned Russian company to call for diplomatic solution and peace in Ukraine.

Dmitriev assumed the office of the Special Presidential Envoy on Foreign Investment and Economic Cooperation on 23 February 2025.

Early life and education

Kirill Dmitriev was born in 1975 in Kiev, Ukrainian SSR, Soviet Union.
In 1989, Dmitriev came to a host family in New Hampshire, as one of the first Soviet exchange students from Ukraine. The same year, he was sent to live with friends of his parents in California, where the host family and Dmitriev convinced administrators at Foothill College to enroll him. Although Dmitriev had no prior English-language schooling and only just graduated from the Soviet equivalent of middle school, he was highly successful at the community college. Upon receiving his associate's degree, he transferred to Stanford University, from which he holds a BA in economics with honors and distinction. He continued his education at Harvard Business School, where he completed the MBA program as a Baker scholar.

Career

Dmitriev worked as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs in New York and a consultant at McKinsey & Company in Los Angeles, Moscow, and Prague,

In 2000, he returned to Russia. He was an associate at private equity fund Delta Private Equity Partners from 2002 to 2007, while also working for The U.S. Russia Investment Fund.

In 2004, Dmitriev worked on the sale of DeltaBank to General Electric, and in 2005 DeltaCredit Bank to Société Générale,

Dmitriev was the president of Icon Private Equity from 2007 to 2010.

Dmitriev sold CTC Media shares to Fidelity Investments, National Cable Networks to Basic Element, CompuLink to three investment funds, TV3 to Prof-Media, and NTC to Bank Rossiya.

Dmitriev was Chairman of the Russian Venture Capital and Private Equity Association from 2005 to 2006.

In 2010, the World Economic Forum selected Dmitriev to be a Young Global Leader, and he was elected as a Vice President of the Russian Union of Industrialists and Entrepreneurs (RSPP).

In 2011 he was the only Russian national to be named one of 100 most influential private equity professionals of the decade by ''Private Equity International'' magazine.

Russian Direct Investment Fund

In 2011, he was appointed as CEO of a newly created Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a sovereign wealth fund to make equity co-investments in Russia companies. His mission has been described as "to change the face of Russian capitalism" and make the Russian economy less dependent on the petroleum industry by "overcoming western funds’ reluctance to invest in a country viewed as corrupt, prone to state meddling and plagued by a law-of-the-jungle legal system".

Under his leadership, RDIF has successfully invested with foreign partners in more than 90 projects totaling more than 2.1 trillion rubles and covering 95% of the regions of the Russian Federation. RDIF has established joint strategic partnerships with leading international co-investors from more than 15 countries including Saudi Arabia, UAE, China, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, South Korea, Japan, Vietnam, Italy and France. Foreign partners have included BlackRock, One Equity Partners, Goldman Sachs, and Deutsche Bank. Dmitriev has cultivated a close relationship with Mohammed Bin Salman since 2014.

Fighting COVID-19

In 2020 Dmitriev focused RDIF on combatting the novel coronavirus infection through investing in most promising solutions in testing, drugs, vaccines:

# In March, 2020 RDIF invested in the production of unique Russian-Japanese testing system to detect COVID-19 within 30 mins (produced unde
EMG brand
. More than 13 million testing kits were sold by RDIF and its partners abroad. The system is being used in all major airports of Moscow: Sheremetyevo, Domodedovo and Vnukovo.
# In March, 2020 RDIF and Russian pharmaceutical company ChemRar Group agreed to create a JV aimed at the production of Favipiravir-based drug Avifavir (generic version of the Japanese drug Avigan, which was proven to be effective by the Phase 3 clinical trials of Fujifilm Toyama Chemical 5 months after RDIF and ChemRar registered Avifavir in Russia. Avifavir was the first anti-COVID-19 drug officially registered in Russia. It has been exported to more than 15 countries worldwide.
# RDIF invested in the production in Russia and abroad of the Sputnik V vaccine. The vaccine is based on the proven and safe platform of human adenoviral vectors. Dmitriev felt personally hurt by the rejection of Sputnik by the western pharmaco-industrial trust.

Dmitriev has been critical of British COVID-19 vaccine research efforts, repeatedly referring to the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine as the "monkey vaccine", as the studies involved a modified version of the virus that infected chimpanzees. Dmitriev stopped this after ''The Times'' accused him of acting as part of a co-ordinated disinformation campaign against the British research efforts.

In 2020, Dmitriev advocated for the partnership of Gamaleya Institute, RDIF and AstraZeneca to help AstraZeneca increase the efficacy of its vaccine by combining it with one of the components of Sputnik V: on November 23, 2020, RDIF and Gamaleya Institute offered AstraZeneca to collaborate on this via a twitter post. AstraZeneca accepted RDIF's proposal. The partnership between RDIF, Gamaleya Institute and AstraZeneca was created in December 2020. In February 2021, health officials in Azerbaijan granted approval for a clinical trial in the country on combining Russia's Sputnik V vaccine with the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 shot in adults 18 years and older.

Interlocking directorships

As of 2021, he served on the Board of Directors of Rostelecom, MDMG, Gazprombank, the Russian Railways, Transneft, Rosseti, Skolkovo Foundation, and the supervisory board of ALROSA. He is also on the boards of trustees of the Mariinsky Theatre, Lomonosov Moscow State University, Russian Institute of Theatre Arts GITIS and National History Fund.

Other activities

In November 2008, Dmitriev published an essay entitled, "Crisis: five rules for survival", in the leading Russian business daily ''Vedomosti'', the sister paper of the ''Financial Times'' and the ''Wall Street Journal'', in which he warned that the 2008 financial crisis crisis would be prolonged.

In November 2012 he was appointed Deputy Chairman of the Investment Council under the Chairman of the State Duma. Serves as the Russian representative in the APEC Business Advisory Council.

Dmitriev was Chairman of the B20s Investments and Infrastructure Taskforce during the 2013 Russian presidency of the G20.

In 2014 Dmitriev was the Russian representative in the BRICS Business Council.

In January 2017, Dmitriev met with Erik Prince, the founder of the private military company Blackwater, George Nader, and the UAE Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan (known as "MBZ") in the Seychelles. The meeting was convened by the UAE. Erik Prince was understood by the other participants to represent the presidential transition team of Donald Trump, while Dmitriev was understood to represent the Russian government. Prior to the meeting Nader had briefed Prince on Dmitriev and at the meeting Nader introduced Prince to Dmitriev as the person "designated by Steve annonto meet you! I know him and he is very very well connected and trusted by the New Team." Dmitriev also had contact to Jared Kushner during the first Trump presidency, and maintains contacts to the second Trump presidency in 2025, including Steve Witkoff.

In February 2019, Kirill Dmitriev was one of the first Russian executives and businessmen to personally speak in defence of the detained founder and head of the Baring Vostok Capital Partners Michael Calvey and other detained employees of the investment fund. Dmitriev appealed to Moscow City Court, Moscow's Basmanny District Court, and the Russian Investigative Committee, requesting to put detained Michael Calvey and other Baring Vostok employees to house arrest. Later on a court in Moscow released Calvey from pretrial detention and put him to house arrest.

Goldman Sachs and Russia

Kirill Dmitriev began his career in finance at Goldman Sachs in New York during the late 1990s, where he gained experience in Western investment banking. In 2011, Dmitriev was appointed CEO of the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), a sovereign wealth fund established to attract foreign investment into Russia. In February 2025, he was named Special Representative of the Russian President for Investment and Economic Cooperation, underscoring his role in navigating economic relations amid ongoing international sanctions.

During Donald Trump's presidency, Dmitriev was reported to have maintained informal contacts with members of the Trump administration. He notably met with U.S. real estate developer Steve Witkoff, a Trump associate, in discussions that were later dubbed the "Witkoff-Dmitriev pact" by some media outlets. These interactions earned Dmitriev the moniker "Putin’s Trump-whisperer" and highlighted his role as an intermediary in unofficial diplomatic channels.

Dmitriev was also named in the report by U.S. Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who investigated Russian interference in the 2016 United States presidential election. Mueller concluded that shortly before Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017, Dmitriev met with Trump associate Erik Prince in the Seychelles. According to ''The New York Times'', in 2016 Dmitriev, leveraging his connections with Goldman Sachs, reached out through a Lebanese-American intermediary linked to the Trump campaign, seeking to establish contact with Trump’s inner circle—preferably Donald Trump Jr. or Jared Kushner. By the end of that month, he connected with Rick Gerson, a close friend of Kushner and a hedge fund manager in New York. Their discussions reportedly included the prospect of a joint investment initiative.

In March 2025, as reported by Bloomberg, Goldman Sachs became the first major American financial institution to offer ruble-linked derivatives to investors since the imposition of Western sanctions in 2022. Around the same time, Russian President Vladimir Putin issued a decree allowing selected American investment funds to liquidate or transfer their holdings in Russian securities. Among them was the U.S.-based fund 683 Capital Partners LP, which received authorization to acquire Russian corporate assets previously owned by about a dozen Western firms, including Franklin Advisers Inc., Templeton Asset Management Ltd., and Baillie Gifford Overseas Ltd.

Goldman Sachs, where Dmitriev previously worked, has been scrutinized for its historical ties to multiple U.S. administrations, particularly during the Trump era, when several alumni—including Steven Mnuchin and Gary Cohn—held senior positions. Although there is no direct evidence linking the firm to lobbying efforts around Russia sanctions, analysts have noted that personal and professional networks may have played an indirect role in shaping policy perspectives.

Ukrainian ceasefire talks

It came to light after the initial meeting in February 2025 of the Ukrainian ceasefire talks between the Trump administration and the Russian side that Sergey Lavrov clashed visibly with Dmitriev, who had not been accredited through him by Putin, and Lavrov denied him a chair at the table.

In early April 2025, Dmitriev took part in the negotiation process concerning the war in Ukraine and economic relations between the US and Russia, meeting with American envoy Steve Witkoff several times.

Awards

He has been awarded the Order of Alexander Nevsky (12 June 2017), the Order of Honour (16 April 2020), and Presidential Certificate of Honour (25 May 2015) by the Russian Federation.

He was awarded the Chevalier of the National Order of the Legion of Honour (19 November 2018) for his great contribution to strengthening cooperation between Russia and France, the King Abdulaziz Second-Class Order of Merit (5 October 2019) for his contribution to strengthening cooperation between the Russian Federation and Saudi Arabia, the Commander of the Order of the Star of Italy (14 May 2020) for his special achievements in the development of friendly relations and cooperation between Italy and Russia, and the Order of Friendship of Kazakhstan (20 December 2020) for special merits in the development of friendly relations and cooperation between Kazakhstan and Russia.

Personal life

Dmitriev is married to Natalia Valerievna Popova (). Popova is a deputy on the board of the NGO Innopraktika Foundation (). Her close friend, Katerina Tikhonova, is the director of the Innopraktika Fund which was created “for an effective and flexible solution to the problems of the country's innovative development” ().

His wife Natalia, who is a deputy director of the NGO ''Innopraktika Foundation'', works for and is a very close friend of Putin's younger daughter Katerina Tikhonova.

The couples Shamalov-Tikhonova and Dmitriev-Popova were very close and went on holiday trips together before the divorce of Shamalov and Tikhonova which was announced in early 2018.

Notes

References

External links

Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF)Icon Private EquityDelta Private Equity Partners

;Press comments
The Banker:Banks merge to combat crisisBusinessNewEuropeClose Putin adviser revealed to have amassed vast real estate fortune by FBK investigation
''Novaya Gazeta''. April 2, 2025

{{DEFAULTSORT:Dmitriev, Kirill
Living people
1975 births
Businesspeople from Kyiv
Stanford University alumni
Harvard Business School alumni
Foothill College alumni
Goldman Sachs people
Private equity and venture capital investors
Russian people associated with interference in the 2016 United States elections
Russian individuals subject to U.S. Department of the Treasury sanctions
Russian individuals subject to United Kingdom sanctions