photo: APThe head of Russia's sovereign wealth fund, Kirill Dmitriev, is said to be close to both Trump's son-in-law and Putin's daughter, and is considered a key figure in Russia-US relations.
Kirill Dmitriev, head of the Russian State Investment Fund (RDIF), is considered one of the architects Trump's of the 28-point plan for peace in Ukraine. He graduated from Stanford and can not only boast of close relations with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner, but also with influential powers throughout the Arab world. Such a biography, together with his rich business experience, but also ties with the family of the Russian president Vladimir Putin, made him an ideal choice for the role of Russia's unofficial, alternative negotiator.
Its importance for the Kremlin has increased since January 2025, after the start of the second presidential term of Donald Trump. Then Kirill Dmitriev appeared as one of the main Russian negotiators in the peace talks on Ukraine, but also as one of the main actors in the broader Russian-American relations, writes DW.
In February 2025, Putin appointed him as a special presidential envoy for investments and economic cooperation with foreign countries. This followed only a few days after the first meeting of Russian and American representatives in Riyadh, in which Dmitriev participated.
Today, Dmitriev is one of the Kremlin's key diplomatic channels, according to former Russian diplomat Boris Bondarev. While Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov deals with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Dmitriev is in charge of contacts with US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff.
"Dmitriyev is the conduit to Vitkoff," Bondarev says, adding: "Vitkoff is a vulnerable, actually very weak link in the Trump administration. They're all relatively weak, but he's the weakest. That's why Dmitriyev was tasked with working with him and trying to push the Russian approach past that particular weak spot."
Kirill Dmitriev, son of the famous biologist Alexander Dmitriev, was born in Kiev. However, he seems reluctant to acknowledge his origins – in a 2021 interview with independent Russian outlet The Bell, the would-be negotiator insisted on wording that he was not born in Ukraine, but in the Soviet Union.
After graduating from Stanford University, he stayed briefly in the United States, where he began a career at investment bank Goldman Sachs and consulting firm McKinsey, according to an official biography on the RDIF website. In the end, he decided to build his career in Russia and Ukraine.
In Russia, he held one of the key positions in the Russian-American firm Delta Private Equity Partners, which had about 500 million dollars at its disposal. In Ukraine, Dmitriev managed a fund owned by the son-in-law of the second Ukrainian president, Leonid Kuchma.
Dmitriyev assumed the current position of director of the Russian Direct Investment Fund in 2011. That organization was founded to attract Western capital to the country. It was in this role that he ended up on the American and European sanctions list at the very beginning of the war in Ukraine.
But it was not only professional achievements that brought Dmitrijev to the forefront of international events. His real capital was his social network – the contacts he carefully nurtured over the years.
Ilya Shumanov, former director of the anti-corruption organization Transparency International Russia, told DW that the relationship with the son-in-law of the second Ukrainian president opened Dmitry's doors to the Russian political and business elite.
"A key part of that network was Ekaterina Tikhonova, allegedly Putin's daughter, who is close to Kirill Dmitriev's wife," Shumanov says.
He claims that the relationship between the Dmitriyev and Tikhonova families goes beyond friendship and that the families are closely related.
Dmitriev served on the boards of several large Russian companies, including those with significant state ownership.
Dmitriev began to act as a mediator during Trump's first term. In 2020, The Daily Beast described him as "Putin's money man," who has secret ties to Jared Kushner.
Jared Kushner, Trump's son-in-law and Ivanka Trump's husband, was in charge of the president's foreign policy assignments. Although he is not so much present in the public in his second term, Kushner recently participated in the drafting of Trump's peace plan for Gaza, and he also attended the peace talks on Ukraine in Geneva.
During their first term, Dmitriev and Kushner discussed possible US investments in Russia - talks that ultimately did not result in major projects.
But Dmitriev became an important figure in Russian foreign policy in December 2023, almost two years after the start of the great war in Ukraine, according to political analyst and former writer of Putin's speeches Abbas Galyamov.
"After the start of the war, Putin could hardly travel anywhere [because of the arrest warrant of the International Criminal Court]," recalls Galyamov. "That feeling of isolation deeply worried him, as well as all of Russia. Then Kirill Dmitriev took over the role of the main organizer of his trip [to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates]."
In addition to organizing the trip itself, Dmitriyev and his sovereign wealth fund managed to attract investment from those countries, an impressive feat at a time of Western capital outflows.
"In other words, he proved to be extremely effective on the international stage," says Galyamov.
Galyamov sees Dmitriyev as a person inclined to resolve differences between the US and Russia through compromise - unlike Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who is a strong advocate of a hard line.
"When Putin feels that real negotiations are necessary, Dmitriyev steps in," notes Galyamov. "But in many situations, Putin does not want to negotiate. Lavrov is a reflection of that way of thinking."
Galyamov points out that during the last visit of American special envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow, Putin held talks with him without Lavrov, but in the presence of Dmitriyev and his adviser Yuri Ushakov. However, it remains unclear whether such a choice by Putin signals the future direction of Russian diplomacy.
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