Putin's representative in negotiations with US, Kyiv native Dmitriev, headed Pinchuk's investment fund

The head of the russian Direct Investment Fund, which is participating in negotiations with the US on behalf of russian president vladimir putin, Kirill Dmitriev, born in Kyiv, headed the investment fund of one of the richest people in Ukraine, businessman Viktor Pinchuk, in the late 2000s.

This is stated in the publication of Ukrainian Pravda, dedicated to Dmitriev.

Dmitriev was born in 1975 in Kyiv in the family of a biologist. His father, Oleksandr Dmitriev, was the head of the Plant Immunity Laboratory of the Institute of Cell Biology and Genetic Engineering of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine for many years, and in the 1980s he was the head of the Natural and Technical Sciences Sector of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine. But Dmitriev's family does not have roots in Kyiv. Kirill's grandfather Petro, a military man who fought in World War II and held one of the leading positions in the Kyiv Military District, moved there.

He studied at a physics and mathematics school in the Ukrainian capital. In the early 1990s, he was able to move to the United States through exchange programs, where he graduated from Stanford University with a bachelor's degree in economics. He then worked at Goldman Sachs, and later at the consulting company McKinsey, which paid for the young financier's studies at Harvard Business School, where he received an MBA.

But then he unexpectedly chose to continue his career in russia. In 2000, he moved to Moscow and became deputy director of the IT company IBS. At that time, Dmitriev had a Ukrainian passport, but he registered the car he bought with a russian officer's license No. AM1198939, issued in 2000.

“Certificates with similar letters and numbers were received by graduates of the Academy of the russian Foreign Intelligence Service and GRU personnel officers. How a citizen of Ukraine ended up with such a document, the journalists did not find out, but their interlocutors said that it was not difficult for a person with connections to obtain such a certificate,” the author of the Ukrainian Pravda publication notes.

But in 2007, Dmitriev headed the Icon Private Equity investment fund of Viktor Pinchuk, which had about USD 1 billion at its disposal.

It was then that Kirill began to participate in the Economic Forum in Davos, where Pinchuk regularly held his events.

But in 2011, Dmitriev returned to Moscow, where he heads the russian Direct Investment Fund. The key role in the creation of this fund was played by another Dmitriev, Vladimir (not a relative of Kirill), the head of the state corporation VEB (Vnesheconombank). According to Meduza, it was Pinchuk who recommended Kirill to Vladimir.

After moving, Kirill married Natalia Popova, a close friend of vladimir putin's youngest daughter, Yekaterina Tikhonova.

This marriage became a pass for Dmitriev into putin's inner circle. The status of the russian Direct Investment Fund also grew. In 2016, putin removed it from the subordination of VEB and granted it the status of a sovereign fund of russia. It is also a member of the supervisory boards of a large number of state-owned companies.

There is no information about Pinchuk's connections and communication with Dmitriev after 2014.

As Ukrainian News Agency earlier reported, Dmitriev facilitated the visit of Donald Trump's Special Envoy Steve Witkoff to Moscow, and then participated in negotiations with the American delegation in Saudi Arabia as a member of the russian delegation in mid-February. On February 23, he was appointed special envoy of the president of the russian federation for investment and economic cooperation with foreign countries, while retaining his position as chairman of the russian Direct Investment Fund.

In early April, he became the first russian official to visit Washington after the start of the full-scale invasion and held talks there with Witkoff and unnamed representatives of the Trump administration.

He called the talks constructive and accused Ukraine of violating the moratorium on attacks on energy infrastructure.