Foundations linked to former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have amassed about $850 million since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, RFE/RL's Russian investigative unit, Systema, has found.
The rising fortunes of the foundations coincides with a wartime reincarnation of Medvedev, 59, who was dismissed as prime minister by President Vladimir Putin in 2020.
But he has found an audience of millions in a new role as an online attack dog while keeping a hand in government as deputy chairman of Putin's Security Council and chairman of the dominant United Russia party.
Medvedev, a once mild-mannered, moderate figure, has championed the war in wildly hawkish, hate-filled social media rants against Kyiv and the West.
Taken together, 15 foundations with ties to Medvedev received a total of about 28 billion rubles ($424 million at the relevant exchange rates) between 2015 and 2021, the last year before Russia launched its all-out assault in February 2022, according to financial records examined by Systema.
In 2022-24, that number jumped to more than 130 billion rubles ($1.39 billion), with more than half of the infusions coming last year.
The organizations had a total of 23.5 billion rubles ($316 million) on their books at the end of 2021 and 86.4 billion rubles ($850 million) at the end of 2024, records showed. Outlays have gone to a range of recipients including Russian forces fighting against Ukraine and real estate projects with apparent ties to Medvedev from St. Petersburg to the Black Sea shore, Systema discovered.
The foundations do not publicly identify their donors, and only two of the 14 that still exist currently have websites. One of those, Nasha Pravda (Our Truth) says it has spent 2.4 billion rubles in the past two years in support of the "special military operation," Putin's mandatory term for the war against Ukraine, with outlays going for thousands of drones as well as night-vision goggles, generators, medical equipment, and other supplies.
Cooperation With United Russia
Nasha Pravda was created at Medvedev's initiative, the head of United Russia's central executive committee, Aleksei Sidyakin, has said, and the foundation has cooperated with the party -- in February 2025, for example, jointly giving a Russian military unit equipment worth more than 14 million rubles ($177,000), according to the endowment's website.
Medvedev's 29-year-old son, Ilya, who joined the party in September 2022, took part in the ceremony, according to an announcement on the Nasha Pravda website that identified him as a project director in the same party committee.
Few of the foundations provide details about the targets of their spending.
But evidence indicates some have been used for purposes that directly or indirectly support real estate projects with apparent links to Medvedev, a subject of scrutiny and public interest since the late Kremlin foe Aleksei Navalny's now-outlawed Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK) published a report revealing a network of mansions, yachts, vineyards, and other assets secretly owned by the then-prime minister.
The FBK report included alleged Medvedev residences in the Volga River town of Plyos, the Kursk region, the upscale Moscow suburb known as Rublyovka, and Sochi, as well as a winemaker called Skalisty Bereg and several yachts. Systema found that most of the properties mentioned in the report are still linked to foundations connected to Medvedev.
In March, Nasha Pravda teamed up with Skalisty Bereg, which has vineyards near the coastal resort of Anapa, to help with the cleanup in the wake of a major fuel-oil spill in December. Skalisty Bereg is controlled by foundations linked to Medvedev as of December, and Ilya Medvedev sits on its board of directors.
In December 2022, meanwhile, FKK -- a firm owned by a foundation linked to Medvedev -- acquired a management company, Makna, that in turn oversaw a dilapidated resort called Shingary, located a 7-minute drive from Skalisty Bereg and 100 meters from the sea.
Demolition of the resort began a few months later, and FKK purchased several plots nearby while also leasing land in the area from Makna. The transactions suggested plans for a new development, but it is unclear what may be built.
Closer to Medvedev's hometown of St. Petersburg, a foundation called Nevsky acquired a two-story cottage on the city's outskirts in 2023 -- and, in 2024, added a dacha in Pavlovsk, also nearby, where Medvedev spent summers as a child and paid a visit as president in 2009.
Medvedev ignored the requests from Systema for comment, as did foundations including Nasha Pravda and Nevsky. Skalisty Bereg also did not respond to a request for comment. FKK's CEO hung up as soon as he heard a journalist was calling and did not respond to the questions sent to him via messenger.
Fomenting A War
Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the transformation of Medvedev's public persona has been stark. As president from 2008 until 2012, in between long stints with Putin in the Kremlin, the junior partner in the "tandem" portrayed himself as a relative liberal, a reformer, and proponent of greater freedoms.
Russians who had hoped for change felt betrayed when Putin returned to the presidency in 2012, moving Medvedev to the No. 2 spot as prime minister. Amid an ever-tightening clampdown at home, Russia occupied Crimea and seized control of parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014, fomenting a war that was followed eight years later by the full-scale invasion.
Widely seen as weak and unimportant after Putin demoted him and then pushed him out as prime minister in January 2020, Medvedev's public trust rating was under 23 percent at the end of 2021, compared to 65 percent for Putin, according to state-funded pollster VTsIOM.
In VTsIOM results from June 1, Medvedev's trust rating had doubled to 45.7 percent, higher than any Russian political figure other than Putin and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. The Telegram channel he started weeks into the full-scale invasion, the main vehicle for his rabidly belligerent diatribes against Ukraine and the West, had made him the most popular Russian blogger by the end of 2022, with posts now averaging over 1.8 million views.
Medvedev's frequently bilious social media posts have included sometimes profane attacks on Western governments, dire warnings for Kyiv, and thinly veiled threats of nuclear attack.
In 2023, he mused aloud about bombing the Bundestag in Berlin.
Last week, he said on Telegram that Russia's goal in the first direct peace talks with Ukraine in three years was not peace but "ensuring our swift victory and the complete destruction" of the government in Kyiv.
The United States, the European Union, Britain, and other countries have imposed sanctions on Dmitry and Ilya Medvedev in connection with Russia's war against Ukraine.
