“It is going through one of the most critical and difficult periods in its history,” said the president, as he found himself a foregone conclusion: the US and Russia have reached an agreement that he is only required to sign.
which has been leaked to the media and includes many of Moscow’s maximalist demands, was reportedly shaped behind the scenes by Kirill Dmitriev, a trusted aide to the Russian president.
Dmitriev, 50, met with US special envoy Steven Witkoff for three days in Miami to hammer out a peace plan that largely adopts Russian positions – including ceding Ukrainian territory and drastically reducing the Ukrainian military.
Since the beginning of Donald Trump’s second term, as he has evolved into one of the regular interlocutors in informal Russian-American contacts. “There is a Russian gentleman, his name is Kirill. He was a key interlocutor, acting as a liaison between the two sides,” Witkoff said recently.
From Kiev to Harvard and the Kremlin’s courtyard
Born in Kiev, then part of the Soviet Union, Dmitriev participated at the age of 15 in a student exchange program with the US, where he later returned to study at Stanford University and earn an MBA from Harvard.
While in the US as a teenager, he had told a local journalist that Ukraine had a long and proud history of independence and that growing nationalist sentiment would help “break the power of the communist system”. But since then he has developed into one of the most loyal supporters of the Kremlin.
Head of ‘shadow fund for Putin’
In 2011 he settled in Russia and took over the management of RDIF (Russian Direct Investment Fund), which brought him even closer to the Kremlin circle. RDIF is an unusual type of sovereign fund in that it operates more like a private equity firm, seeking foreign investors for partnerships within Russia.
The fund has been the target of sanctions and harsh criticism from the Biden administration. “Although officially a sovereign wealth fund, RDIF is widely seen as a shadow fund for President Vladimir Putin and an emblematic element of the wider Russian kleptocracy,” the US Treasury Department said.
How the US-Russia Informal Mediator Became
After the Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Washington imposed sanctions on Dmitriev himself. But Trump’s return to the White House a year ago changed the situation.
Dmitriev began reaching out to the U.S. government touting the economic opportunities that could come from a potential peace deal, promising multibillion-dollar contracts in the Arctic and other areas — a prospect particularly attractive to a government “obsessed with business,” as he describes it. Guardian.
He placed particular emphasis on cultivating a close relationship with Steve Witkoff, Trump’s close friend and longtime business partner, in hopes of tapping into the US president’s enthusiasm for deals. The two helped secure the release of American teacher Mark Fogel in a prisoner swap in February – a move described as a first step in mending Washington-Moscow ties.
Dmitriev, however, did not limit himself to Witkov. He reaches out to other prominent figures in the MAGA movement, and as an active user of the X platform, he posts daily about Europe’s “immigration crisis,” accuses “globalization” of indoctrinating children with “transgender programs,” and regularly promotes conspiracy theories — positions that resonate with Trump’s most extreme audience.
In late October, on a trip to the US for talks with the Trump administration, he gave interviews to Fox News and CNN, and gave chocolates with Putin’s face on them to a US congressman.
“Many Russians who speak English well have no idea how we think. But he has spent a lot of time with Westerners, particularly Americans, and he has a great sense of how we process information,” an American economist who has worked with him told NBC.
The “enemies” within
Despite his loyalty to Putin, Dmitriev’s rapid rise has caused turmoil in the Russian diplomatic establishment. The Guardian reports that his relationship with Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov is poor and that their conflict is now “an open secret in Moscow”.
Notably, the two men clashed last February during peace talks in Riyadh with the US, when Lavrov allegedly tried to exclude him by removing the chair he had been given. Dmitriev eventually attended the meeting, following a phone call with Putin.
“Dmitriev has made enemies in Russia. But at the moment he remains intact because he is proving extremely useful to Putin,” a Russian source told the paper.
