{"id":146684,"date":"2025-11-22T06:51:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-22T06:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/146684\/"},"modified":"2025-11-22T06:51:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-22T06:51:10","slug":"kirill-dmitriev-ruthlessly-ambitious-kremlin-figure-behind-ukraine-plan-russia","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/146684\/","title":{"rendered":"Kirill Dmitriev: \u2018ruthlessly ambitious\u2019 Kremlin figure behind Ukraine plan | Russia"},"content":{"rendered":"

When relations between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin<\/a> soured this autumn, with the US president publicly accusing Moscow of blocking a path to a peace in Ukraine and announcing significant sanctions against Russia\u2019s oil sector, one man saw an opening.<\/p>\n

Kirill Dmitriev, the US-savvy, Harvard-educated head of Russia\u2019s sovereign wealth fund, boarded a plane to Florida late October, where he met Steve Witkoff<\/a>, the property developer serving as Trump\u2019s freelance envoy on Ukraine.<\/p>\n

Kirill Dmitriev and Steve Witkoff before talks with Vladimir Putin in St Petersburg in April. Photograph: Vyacheslav Prokofyev\/AP<\/p>\n

The two men, neither of whom has any real diplomatic experience, began drafting a plan that would impose draconian terms on Ukraine<\/a> and hand Moscow sweeping influence over the country\u2019s political and military sovereignty.<\/p>\n

The scheme, which surfaced in media reports on Wednesday<\/a>, has thrust Dmitriev back into the global spotlight \u2013 a position, several people who have met him over the years say, he has long craved.<\/p>\n

\u201cDmitriev is obsessed with being perceived as important,\u201d said one source, who has known him since the Moscow business scene of the late 2000s. \u201cHe is ruthlessly ambitious,\u201d the source added, describing him as \u201cvery thin on substance but exceptionally good at selling himself\u201d.<\/p>\n

The source, like others, asked for anonymity so they could speak freely. \u201cFake it till you make it\u201d was Dmitriev\u2019s modus operandi, the source said. \u201cAnd he has, objectively, made it very far.\u201d<\/p>\n

It may come as a surprise to some that one of Moscow\u2019s most aggressive champions was born in Soviet-era Ukraine<\/a>. The son of prominent scientists, Dmitriev grew up and studied at Kyiv\u2019s elite Lyceum No 145, a competitive maths and physics school where he made an impression on friends as a hard-working pupil who was obsessed with the US.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe was quite arrogant \u2026 but very systematic, and if he wanted to achieve something, he worked on that,\u201d said Volodymyr Ariev, who was in the same year as Dmitriev and is now a Ukrainian MP.<\/p>\n

At 15, Dmitriev was selected by his school for a trip to the US \u2013 an experience that, according to Ariev, solidified his fascination with the country.<\/p>\n

A young Dmitriev (left) from a school visit he made to the US. Photograph: Provided by Volodymyr Ariev from personal archives<\/p>\n

He later enrolled at Stanford University, followed by an MBA course at Harvard. In a 2000 New York Times story about Harvard\u2019s business school<\/a>, Dmitriev marvelled at the opportunities that came with his new course. \u201cThere\u2019s a great sense of bonding with your teammates. You live together, go out at night to celebrate victories or drown sorrows,\u201d Dmitriev says.<\/p>\n

He also foreshadowed his own ambition and knack for making connections: \u201cI also go to New York for business development, to establish strategic alliances and meet with clients, four times a month.\u201d<\/p>\n

After stints at McKinsey and Goldman Sachs, his real business breakthrough came not in Moscow or New York but in Kyiv. From 2007 to 2011, he ran Icon Private Equity, a Ukrainian fund managing roughly $1bn, most of it belonging to the oligarch Victor Pinchuk, the son-in-law of the former Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma.<\/p>\n

Pinchuk introduced him to Vladimir Dmitriev (no relation), then head of the Russian state development corporation VEB, according to a well-connected source in Moscow who has direct knowledge of the events.<\/p>\n

Kirill Dmitriev\u2019s real business breakthrough came not in the US, where he studied at Stanford and Harvard, but in Kyiv. Photograph: Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

Together, the two Dmitrievs persuaded the Kremlin to launch Russia\u2019s foreign investment fund (RDIF) that would lure American, European and Gulf capital into Russia.<\/p>\n

The role \u2013 eventually overseeing $10bn \u2013 seemed to suit him perfectly, said a Russian business reporter who knew Dmitriev personally. The smooth-talking Dmitriev became a fixture in Davos, Riyadh and at global investor summits, gliding from panels on artificial intelligence to discreet bilateral meetings with sovereign funds.<\/p>\n

It was also around this time that Dmitriev\u2019s personal connections to the Kremlin thickened. His wife, Natalia Popova, developed a close personal and professional relationship with Putin\u2019s younger daughter, Katerina Tikhonova. Popova remains the deputy director of Innopraktika, Tikhonova\u2019s research institute.<\/p>\n

An investigation by the Russian outlet the Insider also alleged<\/a> close links between Dmitriev and Russia\u2019s security services.<\/p>\n

Vladimir Putin and Kirill Dmitriev at the Grand Kremlin Palace in April 2025. Photograph: Contributor\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cHe grew extremely confident, even pompous,\u201d said the source who knew Dmitriev at the time.<\/p>\n

Sanctions imposed on Russia after the 2014 annexation of Crimea made it harder for Dmitriev to sell Moscow abroad, but he sensed an opening with Trump\u2019s first election in 2016. One former RDIF colleague said Dmitriev swiftly ordered the fund to release a statement the morning after Trump\u2019s win signalling support for the incoming president.<\/p>\n

Robert Mueller\u2019s report on Russian 2016 US election meddling found that Dmitriev tapped his UAE network, drawn from one of the RDIF\u2019s principal investors, to build a back channel to Trump\u2019s first administration.<\/a><\/p>\n

Dmitriev speaking during a panel session at the World Economic Forum in Davos in 2016. Photograph: Bloomberg\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

After Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Dmitriev was placed under sanctions by Washington. But Trump\u2019s return to power handed him another lifeline.<\/p>\n

Dmitriev quickly began signalling to the White House that there was money to be made in any eventual peace deal, touting the prospect of multibillion-dollar contracts in the Arctic and other areas of US-Russia cooperation \u2013 a potent pitch for a business-obsessed administration.<\/p>\n

He set out specifically to cultivate a relationship with Witkoff, Trump\u2019s trusted friend and longtime business associate, leaning heavily on the property mogul\u2019s enthusiasm for deal-making.<\/p>\n

Together, the two men helped arrange the release of the US schoolteacher Marc Fogel in a prisoner swap<\/a> in February \u2013 a gesture they framed as an early step toward repairing relations between Washington and Moscow.<\/p>\n

Donald Trump at an event to welcome back the released American schoolteacher Marc Fogel (right) who had been held in Russia since 2021. Photograph: Kevin Lamarque\/Reuters<\/p>\n

But Dmitriev has not limited himself to Witkoff. Much of his public activity now appears focused on courting other prominent Maga figures and amplifying the US far right\u2019s talking points.<\/p>\n

A fervent user of X, he posts daily<\/a> about Europe\u2019s migration \u201ccrisis,\u201d accuses \u201cglobalists\u201d of indoctrinating children with \u201cpro-trans programmes\u201d and regularly promotes conspiratorial rhetoric \u2013 once even adding a QAnon-style slogan popular with Trump\u2019s most extreme base.<\/p>\n

Dmitriev\u2019s Ukrainian background has not stood in the way of his rise. At 15, he told a local journalist during his trip to the US that Ukraine had a long and proud history of independence \u2013 and that rising nationalist sentiment would help \u201cbreak the power of the communist system\u201d \u2013 but he has since become one of the Kremlin\u2019s most loyal advocates.<\/p>\n

\u201cDmitriev chose Putin\u2019s side,\u201d said Ariev, the Ukrainian MP, adding that most childhood friends had long since broken contact with him. Dmitriev\u2019s closest school friend became a soldier in the Ukrainian army and was wounded in battle recently, Ariev added.<\/p>\n

The source who knew Dmitriev in Moscow in the 2010s said he almost never spoke about his place of birth. \u201cHe had no real interest in Ukraine. His attention was always on Moscow,\u201d they said.<\/p>\n

Still, despite his fierce loyalty to Putin, Dmitriev\u2019s meteoric rise has ruffled feathers within Russia\u2019s ageing foreign policy establishment.<\/p>\n

Putin with Dmitriev in Moscow in 2021. Photograph: Alexey Druzhinin\/SPUTNIK\/AFP\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

One source close to the Kremlin said they had offered to help Dmitriev with outreach to the Americans and with drafting a potential pathway to end the war in Ukraine \u2013 assistance Dmitriev flatly declined.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe could really use some advice on foreign relations, because he himself admitted to me he isn\u2019t an expert on this. But he decided to go at it alone,\u201d the source said.<\/p>\n

Dmitriev\u2019s relationship with Sergei Lavrov, the long-serving foreign minister, is also notoriously poor. The rift between them is now an open secret in Moscow and has occasionally burst into the open.<\/p>\n

Lavrov and Dmitriev clashed last February during peace talks in Riyadh with the US, when the foreign minister tried to exclude him by removing the chair set out for him, according to two people who separately described the episode. Dmitriev ultimately joined the meeting after a call with Putin.<\/p>\n

\u201cDmitriev has made enemies in Russia. But right now, he is untouchable because he is proving to be very useful for Putin,\u201d said the source close to the Kremlin.<\/p>\n

Shaun Walker contributed reporting<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When relations between Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin soured this autumn, with the US president publicly accusing Moscow…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":146685,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-146684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146684\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/146685"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}