UFC Russia Co-Investor: Putin's money man Kirill Dmitriev

A sticky deal between Mubadala and now-sanctioned Kremlin assets.

It was hidden in plain sight but no one in English-language media connected the dots.

The man in charge of UFC Russia’s “co-investors” that TKO didn’t name in their most recent SEC filings is Vladimir Putin’s Western-Educated, sanctioned former Wall Streeter Kirill Dmitriev.

If you don’t already know Kirill Dmitriev’s name, it’s not too late to join his coming-out party in 2025.

It’s a far different story in the Russian language media. Just ask Maria Pevchikh, the journalist who produced this engaging and explosive YouTube video we’ve embedded in this article.

Mr. Dmitriev is Mr. Putin’s key point man for soft power and financial negotiations during the Trump 2.0 era in the White House. A far cry from Mr. Dmitriev’s limited exposure to DC in 2017, as outlined in The Mueller Report.

This NY Times article reveals Mr. Dmitriev’s initial failures to meet Trump’s inner circle during Trump 1.0, but conditions have radically changed under Trump 2.0.

With Trump 2.0 in the White House, Mr. Dmitriev is publicly linking UFC with negotiations over Ukraine and the removal of Western sanctions against the Russian Federation.

This Kirill Dmitriev story is one of the craziest stories I’ve encountered in nearly 30 years of covering combat sports. It’s also one hell of a circus that demonstrates the raw power of Khaldoon Al Mubarak, the real power player financing global sport and the muscle behind Ari Emanuel’s Endeavor machine. English Premier League fans are well aware of Mr. Al Mubarak’s presence at big games, including his appearance over the weekend at Manchester City’s loss to Crystal Palace FC.

From Perestroika to Putin

Kirill Dmitriev’s ascension from a young aspiring financier to Vladimir Putin’s top fundraiser didn’t happen overnight, but it did catch a lot of powerful people off guard.

Mr. Dmitriev isn’t even Russian — he’s Ukrainian. His father, Oleksandr, is known back home as a top biologist. This would prove to be critical to Mr. Dmitriev’s rise to power in Russia.

How he became so powerful and connected in the Kremlin — and tied to the UFC Russia subsidiary with TKO — is a classic story of betrayal for Western political elites who view the Russian Federation through the lens of the Cold War.

With the fall of the Soviet Union after Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika reforms failed, Mr. Dmitriev traveled to America in his 20s. He graduated from Stanford University with a degree in Economics and got his MBA at Harvard. Mr. Dmitriev ended up working for Goldman Sachs and McKinsey.

Mr. Dmitriev’s curriculum vitae shows that he followed the exact path that DC elites wanted to see the best and brightest of the former USSR take en route to “modernizing” Russia for the 21st Century.

Then Mr. Dmitriev returned home. Not to Ukraine, but instead to Russia.

Mr. Dmitriev became a power player in the Russian private equity scene. The World Economic Forum highlighted him as a rising star. This caught the attention of the Kremlin.

Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Medvedev got the Russian Federation into the sovereign wealth fund game, and they wanted to see outsized returns on state investment.

Enter Kirill Dmitriev.

Mr. Dmitriev gained oversight over the Russian Direct Investment Funds (RDIF) & the Russia-China Investment Fund (RCIF). These funds convinced foreign investors to put in significant cash into Russian-based projects.

Here is the profile page for Kirill Dmitriev on the Russian Direct Investment Fund site:

The Russia Direct Investment Fund is worth billions. Read this Interfax piece with Mr. Dmitriev boasting huge profits.

One of the biggest power investors in Russia is the United Arab Emirates’ sovereign wealth fund, Mubadala. Mubadala is the power player behind Ari Emanuel’s WME Group empire and Silver Lake, which paid $4B for UFC from Frank & Lorenzo Fertitta in 2016.

The man behind Mubadala is Khaldoon Al Mubarak. His high profile in global sports investment is unmatched, especially in Manchester City football circles. He’s also well-known and highly regarded in the Trump 2.0 White House.

In 2013, Mubadala and RDIF entered into a $2B joint venture.

As investment from the Gulf States poured into Russia, Mr. Dmitriev would soon expand his presence in the UAE. He quickly became one of Mr. Putin’s top OPEC representatives, as recently profiled by The Financial Times in London. Two-thirds of all foreign investment in Russia is Middle Eastern.

Other key Western investors jumped into the Russian financial space, but the cordial mood between the Kremlin and PE groups like Blackstone turned sour. In January of 2016, Western players in Russia got upset about the RDIF putting a $1.75 billion loan into Russian petrochemical giant Sibur. Mr. Dmitriev granted the loan to Sibur against the wishes of Western investors.

Private Equity groups didn’t have a problem investing in Russia, but politics wasn’t supposed to be a part of the investment equation.

Yes, Western financiers were publicly upset with the Russian Federation over crony capitalism.

However, this didn’t bother Mubadala. Mubadala’s portfolio in Russia greatly expanded over the next five years, especially in the energy sector with Gazprom.

This close relationship between Mubadala and RDIF would play a key role in the founding of UFC Russia.

The building blocks of UFC’s Russia expansion

In July of 2018, a joint press release was issued by UFC & M-1 Global. The face of the new UFC Russia venture was Vadim Finkelchtein.

However, the real muscle behind the UFC Russia Joint Venture was Khaldoon Al Mubarak.

In July of 2018, a subsidiary called UFC Russia was created as a joint venture by M-1 Global + Mubadala (Abu Dhabi) + UFC. M-1 was going to scout talent and send a bunch of contenders to fight in the UFC. The Russia-China Investment Fund backed it.

The money quote from the UFC/M-1 press release about UFC Russia revealed the true power source behind the deal:

That’s a quote from UFC Senior VP of International David Shaw mentioning Kirill Dmitriev’s name.

In a 2018 LinkedIn post, the Russian Direct Investment Fund posted the following:

According to this July 2018 Russia Business Today article, the objective of the Russia-China Investment Fund was to grab their investment distribution five years after the transaction:

At the time of the July 2018 UFC Russia deal, there were no international sanctions in place on the parties who consummated the agreement.

Mr. Shaw and Mr. Dmitriev would work together in 2018 and 2019 to help promote and produce three UFC Russia events.

Two months after the Joint Venture announcement, UFC held its first Russian event in September 2018 at Olympic Stadium in Moscow. Alexey Oleinik defeated Mark Hunt in the main event. Russian news agency TASS covered the event. The article mentioned that David Shaw and Kirill Dmitriev were in attendance.

Here is the post-fight press conference from the first UFC Russia event with David Shaw. We timed the video to jump to the portion where he discusses UFC’s relationship with M-1 Global and Mubadala:

"We've been working for a very long time on the strategy on how to be successful in Russia. As you know, we've tried great content relationships here. For us, this was an important moment. A celebration of hard work but also a lot of opportunity ahead."

"We've made a considerable investment in the marketplace. We've opened up an office here, which is a pretty big step for us. It's about next year, it's about the next five years, the next 10 years."

Two more UFC events, both in 2019, were held in St. Petersburg (April 2019) and Moscow at CSKA Arena (November 2019).

As TKO’s most recent SEC filing revealed, the “Russia Co-Investors” put $9.7M into UFC Russia. In exchange, UFC Russia live events plus a reported 10-year deal branding/IP deal (with an additional 10-year option extension) for UFC Gym branding in Russia. Hypothetically, these “Russia Co-Investors” could have access to UFC IP rights until the year 2038.

The woman who created her wealth in this Russian Fitness Group health club empire, Olga Sloutsker, has one of the richest mansions in London. She became the President of Special Olympics Russia. Her father was a well-known high-powered Russian attorney. She is on Instagram. The New York Times briefly profiled her in 2007.

One other important note — this 2018 Arab News report claims Mubadala is RDIF’s partner in the UFC Gyms in Russia. Small world.

With RDIF & RCIF financing UFC Russia, UFC expansion in the Russian Federation looked unstoppable in 2019. Then all hell broke loose.

A one-two combination: COVID + Sanctions

Remember earlier when we mentioned that Kirill Dmitriev’s father, Oleksandr, is reportedly a well-known Ukrainian biologist working at the Institute of Cell Biology and Genetic Engineering of the National Academy of Sciences?

It turned out that this piece of information would prove to be valuable to the Kremlin.

When COVID hit, the Kremlin proactively started selling the public on its new Sputnik vaccine.

Vladimir Putin and Kirill Dmitriev went into sales mode. Mr. Putin’s money man had a father with a biology background. If you can’t trust Mr. Dmitriev to sell you on a COVID vaccine, then who can you trust?

The Kremlin’s official readout of visits between Mr. Putin and Mr. Dmitriev caught the attention of many Kremlin watchers. How did Mr. Dmitriev gain so much power so quickly?

Mr. Dmitriev gained power within the Kremlin through both his personal and professional connections. He married a supposed classmate (Natalya Popova) of one of Vladimir Putin’s daughters, Katerina Tikhonova. Mr. Dmitriev’s wife is Ms. Tikhonova’s deputy for her institution, Innopraktika.

This August 2023 profile piece in Russian at The Insider reveals a lot of dirt. The article claims he has a private plane that constantly flies between St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Sochi. The Insider claims property tax records reportedly show Mr. Dmitriev has numerous multi-million dollar apartments in the Moscow area.

In Ms. Pevchikh’s embedded YouTube video at the top of this article, she reveals extensive public records that appear to show Mr. Dmitriev owns a lavish portfolio of international assets.

Simply put, Mr. Dmitriev has been one of the best fundraisers for the Russian Federation. He is the glue between the Kremlin and foreign investment, and all roads lead through the Gulf States.

This would, however, be put to the test during the Russia/Ukraine slaughter.

In April of 2021, US President Joe Biden signed an Executive Order for Russian sanctions by the United States Treasury Department.

President Biden’s initial Executive Order is what got Kirill Dmitriev caught in the US sanctions web.

A Treasury Department press release from February of 2022 specifically named Kirill Dmitriev as a primary target:

According to the US Office of Foreign Assets Control, Kirill Dmitriev is on the sanctions list:

In August 2022, the US Treasury, through OFAC sanctioned Mr. Dmitriev’s wife, Natalya Popova:

Here is Natalya Popova’s entry on the OFAC Sanctions list.

In December of 2023, President Biden expanded his original Executive Order to cover the following:

Intriguingly, there are no reported European Union sanctions against Mr. Dmitriev. It is possible that Mr. Dmitriev could be the target of the next batch of EU sanctions against Russia. Nevertheless, the combination of economic sanctions from the US, UK, and Australia on Mr. Dmitriev has produced some unique complications for TKO regarding the UFC Russia investment.

Why hasn’t TKO stated a reason for not paying off their UFC “Russia Co-Investors”? Why haven’t their “Russia Co-Investors” redeemed their non-controlling financial interest in the UFC?

As the UFC generates more revenue and signs a new media rights deal, the Russian investment in UFC will increase in value. In the latest TKO SEC filing, the current value of the investment is nearly $22M.

Understandably, TKO didn’t name their “Russia Co-Investors.” Why risk a public relations headache and have press inquiries about sanctions?

However, fortunes may soon be changing for Mr. Dmitriev and his boss. When Donald Trump won the 2024 US Presidential Election, Mr. Dmitriev was one of the first Russians to reach out to Trump on behalf of the Kremlin.

2025 is turning into the year that Mr. Dmitriev embraced the global spotlight as the voice of Russian soft power and financial diplomacy, as evidenced in this recent video:

Mr. Dmitriev claims that American businesses have lost out on $300 billion in revenue since leaving the Russian marketplace. Despite the Russian Federation claiming that Western sanctions haven’t damaged their economy, they are looking for a way to get American sanctions reversed.

One of the sales pitches that the Russians think will get President Trump’s attention? UFC events.

In our next article, I’ll reveal more of Mr. Dmitriev’s public statements — in both Russian and English — regarding his aspirations for bringing back UFC events to Russia as soon as possible.

The UFC as a chess piece in a global conflict? Welcome to 2025.

We reached out to three different parties for comment: Natalia Moreno (head of global communications for Mubadala), David Shaw (UFC), and Seth Zaslow (TKO investor relations). We did not hear back from any of them for comment regarding Mr. Dmitriev’s role in UFC Russia affairs.

Zach Arnold is the lead opinion writer for The MMA Draw Newsletter on Substack.