Meet Putin's man in the room as Russia, U.S. discuss Ukraine
As U.S. and Russian negotiators work to secure a ceasefire in Ukraine, Kirill Dmitriev will be trying his best to secure the best deal for Vladimir Putin.
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia — He’s an investment banker with a distinctly American pedigree, having studied at Harvard and Stanford before going on to work at Goldman Sachs and McKinsey. But as U.S. and Russian negotiators work to secure a ceasefire in Ukraine, Kirill Dmitriev will be trying his best to secure the best deal for one man: President Vladimir Putin.
Fluent in English and married to a close friend of Putin’s daughter, Dmitriev, 49, is a longtime confidante of the Russian leader, entrusted with running the country’s sovereign wealth fund and a key player in the recent high-level talks in Saudi Arabia about ending the war in Ukraine.
Dmitriev was involved in the meeting between Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov and Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign policy adviser, and an American delegation led by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. He also attended separate meetings in Riyadh and made an argument that might appeal to President Donald Trump — that sanctions had cost U.S. companies billions of dollars.
“His main role, his main task, is what Putin assigned him: to get the Americans to lift sanctions pressure. That’s his job,” Andrei Fedorov, Russia’s former deputy foreign minister, told NBC News in a telephone conversation last week.
Putin thinks of Dmitriev as an official who can be relied on, Fedorov said, adding that he was a “very good executor” when it came to negotiations.
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