Donald Trump is offering Vladimir Putin mind-bogglingly favorable concessions to make a deal, but a Russian czar can’t be seen as a deal-maker. After a three-year war he has promoted as a holy crusade, hundreds of thousands of casualties, and relatively modest gains on the battlefield, Putin can’t very well bargain with the country that provided weapons and intelligence to wipe out his troops. Even for Putin, there are risks to allowing Washington to broker peace.
But the Russian leader has a deal-maker of his own, someone who can translate imperial Russian into the language of Trump World—Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund, one of Putin’s closest confidants, and the country’s pre-eminent finance bro.
Today, the U.S.-Russia relationship is brokered by people whose only language is business. Dmitriev’s American counterpart is Trump’s envoy to Putin, billionaire developer Steve Witkoff, whose foreign-policy achievements include negotiating a ceasefire between Israel and Hamas—now broken—and selling New York’s storied Park Lane hotel to the Qatar Investment Authority.
Born in Kyiv in 1975 to a family of biologists, Dmitriev made his way to the United States at the dawn of the post-Soviet era, helped by an American family he’d met in Soviet Ukraine through the citizen-diplomacy program—a grassroots movement of American activists and Soviet citizens who organized exchanges and initiatives to improve relations between the Cold War enemies.
Dmitriev enrolled first at Foothill College, a community college near San Jose, California, before transferring to Stanford University, where he graduated with honors. Dmitriev was hired by McKinsey & Company, which funded his Harvard M.B.A., then did a stint at Goldman Sachs.
“He was incredibly charming and polite,” says a friend of Dmitriev’s from his Harvard years. “He managed to please everyone.”
In the early 2000s, with Putin already at the helm, Russia was looking for ambitious, Western-educated people to shift the country’s business climate from post-Soviet anarchy to something more civilized. Someone like Dmitriev, who’d have to slowly climb the corporate ladder in the U.S., could make a quick leap to the top in Russia. Dmitriev knew that, in Moscow, he had no competition, and he made up his mind about pursuing a career in Russia while still at Harvard. He even asked his then girlfriend to move to Moscow with him, but she refused.
Dmitriev’s classmates from Harvard knew he had a bright future ahead of him; what surprised them was that said future happened on the dark side.
When Dmitriev arrived in Moscow—on a Ukrainian passport, no less—he bought a Land Rover (used) to better fit in with the money crowd. What’s surprising is that Dmitriev obtained a license plate typically reserved for graduates of the Russian military-intelligence academy. Sources at The Insider, an independent Russian publication, say that, at the time, it was relatively easy to get a government license plate. In my experience, however, you could buy a mayor’s-office license plate, even a police one, but not one for military intelligence.
But it wasn’t a license plate that ensured Dmitriev’s meteoric rise. He married Natalia Popova, a freelance journalist and, most importantly, a close friend and business associate of Yekaterina Tikhonova—Putin’s younger daughter from his first marriage. From then on, Dmitriev wasn’t just another Harvard grad looking for profits in the midst of the Russian oil boom; he was someone with access to the first family. Popova introduced Dmitriev to Kirill Shamalov, Tikhonova’s then husband, who, in turn, connected Dmitriev to Sergei Ivanov, chief of staff of the Russian Presidential Administration and one of Putin’s closest confidants.
As is the tradition with everyone who makes it past the Kremlin wall, Dmitriev was quickly assigned an intelligence-service handler, and in 2011 he became head of Russia’s sovereign-wealth fund. The Kremlin’s “Harvard boy” managed to convince foreign investors—mostly from the Gulf states—of Russia’s economic potential, attracting investments of up to $10 billion.
Dmitriev was no longer a student renting a small apartment in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and he no longer drove used cars. He purchased two apartments in downtown Moscow and built a palatial dacha on the prestigious Novorizhskoe highway, favored by Moscow’s elites.
By 2016, he became Putin’s unofficial emissary to Trump. In fact, he was investigated by Robert Mueller for attempting to establish back-channel communications between the Kremlin and Trump’s team immediately after the 2016 election. The Mueller report described him as acting at the Kremlin’s direction, notably through a secret meeting with Erik Prince, the founder of the private military company Blackwater, in the Seychelles. Prince told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence that the meeting was unplanned and took place over a beer while he was there to meet with United Arab Emirates officials, who introduced them.
There were also indirect overtures to Jared Kushner and others. While Dmitriev’s efforts were well documented, no illegal conspiracy was found. In 2022, Dmitriev and the Russian Direct Investment Fund were sanctioned for supporting Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Dmitriev became one of the few people with what in Moscow’s power circles is called “access to the body”—the highest level of proximity to Putin. He used this connection wisely. Speaking to The Insider, a business associate of Dmitriev’s described Dmitriev’s negotiating tactic: “Kirill loves putting on a show with calls from high-ranking officials. Imagine an intense discussion about a major deal. Suddenly, as if by chance, Sergei Ivanov or Anton Vaino (head of the Presidential Administration) calls: ‘How are the negotiations going?’ Dmitriev would immediately put them on speaker and stand up. After the call, the stunned partners stopped asking unnecessary questions and were ready to agree to almost anything.” No doubt this will impress his American counterparts.
On Wednesday, after the Russian Army hit Ukrainian energy infrastructure just hours after Putin had explicitly agreed not to target it, Witkoff said he believes that the Russian leader operates in good faith. Dmitriev—who tweeted “Under the leadership of President Putin and President Trump, the world has become a much safer place today! 🇷🇺🇺🇸🌍 Historic! Epic!”—is clearly Witkoff’s perfect match.
The Ukrainians, whose view of Putin seems to be more realistic than Witkoff’s, accused Russia of breaking the ceasefire and retaliated, hitting major Russian oil terminals and gas-transit stations in the last few days. Dmitriev didn’t comment on these attacks; he was busy working on a meeting with Elon Musk to cooperate on a Russian-American mission to Mars.
Much like his boss, Witkoff thinks in terms of square feet and rare-earth minerals. Which is great for Putin, whose lack of principles shouldn’t be mistaken for a lack of ideology. Putin will make any deal he needs to in order to achieve his maximalist goal of destroying Ukrainian sovereignty, and people like Dmitriev are there to make the Russian dictator seem transactional and businesslike, not driven by Russia’s centuries-old hunger for conquest.
On the surface, Putin’s pick to lead negotiations is a shrewd one: a Westernized businessman who can deal with Trump World. But Dmitriev, born in Ukraine, is also a Machiavellian choice—because, for Putin, it’s not McKinsey or Harvard that makes him the perfect envoy but his willingness to serve the leader bombing his hometown.
Andrew Ryvkin is a screenwriter, journalist, and Russian-affairs specialist
