Welcome to Dima’s villa era How Dmitry Medvedev used the war against Ukraine to rebuild his influence — and his fortune
In March 2017, Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation released one of its most explosive investigations — the film “Don’t Call Him Dimon,” which exposed a network of residences, vineyards, and yachts tied to Russia’s former president and then–prime minister, Dmitry Medvedev. Navalny’s team uncovered a scheme in which Medvedev had allegedly concealed his wealth using charitable foundations run by friends and family. The film racked up 47 million views and sparked mass protests against corruption. But Medvedev’s business empire remained untouched. Now, eight years later, a new investigation by journalists at the Sistema project reveals that the charitable foundations linked to the former president have only grown richer. Meduza breaks down the key findings.
New image, new money
At the start of 2022, Dmitry Medvedev was effectively in political retirement. Though he held titles like deputy chairman of the Security Council and chairman of United Russia, he wielded little real influence in either role. But Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine gave Medvedev an opportunity: a way to shed his increasingly unpopular — and even dangerous — reputation as a liberal and claw his way back to power. Nineteen days into the full-scale war, he launched a Telegram channel where he began threatening Ukraine and Western countries, hurling insults at their leaders and citizens alike.
It worked. Today, Medvedev’s Telegram channel has nearly 1.7 million subscribers and ranks first in reach among all Russian-language Telegram accounts. His trust ratings have been rising. He is now not only Putin’s deputy on the Security Council but also on the Military-Industrial Commission — another position seemingly created just for him. He chairs the board of directors at Rostelecom, travels to meet with China’s leadership, and gives schoolchildren lectures on geopolitics, quoting directly from his Telegram rants on things like “Atlantic impotents.”
The bitter truth is that events in Russia affect your life, too. Help Meduza continue to bring news from Russia to readers around the world by setting up a monthly donation.
Medvedev’s transformation from liberal to anti-Western firebrand has also paid off financially. Since the war began, charitable foundations linked to him have seen a dramatic influx of cash. Between 2015 and 2023, these organizations received between 2 billion and 9 billion rubles ($25.5 million and $114.5 million, at today’s exchange rate) a year in donations and contributions. In 2023 and 2024, that figure soared to 52 billion and 79 billion rubles ($661.6 million and $1 billion), respectively. At the end of last year, 15 foundations that the investigative project Sistema connected to Medvedev — including some previously identified in the Anti-Corruption Foundation investigation — held a combined 86.4 billion rubles ($1.1 billion) in their accounts.
Yet donating to these foundations isn’t straightforward, Sistema notes. Their bank details aren’t publicly available, and only two of the 15 have websites. In its earlier investigation “Don’t Call Him Dimon,” Alexey Navalny’s team reported that Medvedev’s foundations received donations from major businessmen such as Alisher Usmanov, as well as loans from Gazprombank. At the time, Medvedev dismissed the allegations as “nonsense” without addressing them directly. Neither he nor the foundations responded to Sistema’s inquiries.
War, wine, and waterfront views
In the spring of 2023, a new foundation called Nasha Pravda (“Our Truth”) appeared in Russia. It was established by organizations linked to Dmitry Medvedev, and Medvedev’s son, Ilya, is involved in its work. The foundation was created to support the Russian military and civilians in “areas of the special military operation.” According to its reports, it has spent 2.4 billion rubles ($30.5 million) on these efforts. Nasha Pravda has also taken on other projects, including helping clean up the oil spill off the coast of Anapa — an area that happens to be home to one of Medvedev’s hidden assets: the Skalisty Bereg vineyard.
Just a seven-minute drive from Skalisty Bereg and 100 meters (109 yards) from the shoreline once stood a seaside resort called Shingary. Since 2022, it has been owned by FinkonsaltingK (FКК), a company controlled by a foundation in Medvedev’s orbit. The company expanded the property and began demolishing the existing buildings. It’s unclear what will be built in their place — rumors suggest it could be a new personal retreat for Medvedev. He had previously tried to establish a presence in the Anapa region, but those efforts failed. A Medvedev-linked foundation called Dar had planned to build an estate on a protected stretch of Black Sea coastline, but the project was scrapped after protests by environmental activists and local residents.
By that point, Medvedev already had an extensive portfolio of vacation homes. In 2017, Alexey Navalny’s investigative team identified houses and estates owned by foundations close to him in the town of Plyos on the Volga River, in the village of Mansurovo in the Kursk region, in the elite Moscow suburb of Rublyovka, as well as in Sochi and St. Petersburg. The same foundations also owned two yachts and two vineyards — Skalisty Bereg near Anapa, and another in Italy. According to Sistema, nearly all of these assets are still under the control of the same network of organizations — and they’ve acquired new properties as well.
One such foundation, Nevsky, has acquired 16 hectares of land on the Baltic Sea in Kaliningrad since 2021, along with a cottage in the village of Komarovo near St. Petersburg (where reports suggest Medvedev may build another dacha), and an estate in the town of Pavlovsk, where he used to spend summers as a child with his mother. Other foundations tied to the former president have expanded vineyards in Russia’s Krasnodar Krai and acquired a new yacht, built in the United Kingdom.
Sistema also discovered that the company that bought the Shingary resort — FКК — is the sole creditor of a firm called Arctic Invest. Founded in 2022, Arctic Invest presents itself as a family wealth management investment fund. One of its co-owners is Dmitry Grigoryev, the son of a St. Petersburg city official with ties to Putin’s inner circle, who also serves on the boards of six foundations linked to Medvedev. This, Sistema suggests, seems to indicate that the former president’s informal network has now expanded to include its own private investment fund.
Cover photo: Getty Images