Who is Kirill Dmitriev, the blacklisted Putin ally and a key player in Ukraine peace talks?
CBC
He's blacklisted in the U.S., considered a close ally of Vladimir Putin, and has been described as "ruthlessly ambitious," a "Russian propagandist" and "the Trump whisperer."
Yet Kremlin official Kirill Dmitriev is also emerging as a key figure in U.S. negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.
Last month, Trump administration representatives met with Dmitriev to draft a plan to end the fighting, multiple sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.
The meeting took place in Miami at the end of October and included special envoy Steve Witkoff, U.S. President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and Dmitriev, who leads the Russian Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), one of the country's largest sovereign wealth funds.
Just last month, U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent labelled him a "Russian propagandist." He now appears to be taking on the role of diplomat. Who exactly is Dmitriev, why is he sanctioned and how is he involved with U.S.-Russia talks?
Let's break it all down.
Dmitriev, 50, is a Moscow businessman who was born in Kyiv under the Soviet Union. He's younger than other major players in Russian foreign policy, like Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, who's 75.
He's also a product of a Western education, Foreign Policy magazine explains. As Dmitriev's official profile on the RDIF website notes, he has a bachelor's degree in economics from Stanford University and an MBA from the Harvard Business School.
According to his profile on the World Economic Forum, Dmitriev started his career with stints at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey & Company. He moved to Moscow in 2000 when he was 25, and became deputy CEO of the IT company IBS, according to a profile on Ukrainian news site Ukrainska Pravda.
Dmitriev eventually moved back to Ukraine to head the oligarch Victor Pinchuk's Icon Private Equity investment fund. He moved back to Russia in 2011, which is when he became head of RDIF.
BBC reports that Dmitriev first met Russian President Vladimir Putin around 2000, although their political views haven't always aligned.
A personal tie pushed him into Putin's inner circle. Dmitriev's wife, Natalia Popova, is reportedly a close friend and business associate of Putin's youngest daughter, Katerina Tikhonova.
That connection is part of why Putin appears to trust Dmitriev, Sergey Aleksashenko, a former deputy governor of the Bank of Russia, told Foreign Policy.
But then there's also his role with RDIF. In 2022, when Joe Biden was U.S. president, the Treasury Department called Dmitriev a "known Putin ally," and said RDIF is "widely considered" a slush fund for Putin.
