Meet Dmitry Mironov, the enigmatic Putin aide overseeing the Kremlin’s HR department

As Vladimir Putin tightens his circle of trust, a former secret service officer has emerged as one of his closest aides.

Dmitry Mironov cuts an inscrutable figure. In recent years, the stocky Russian official has seldom appeared in public, and when he does, he usually fronts his signature scowl.

But while the enigmatic 55-year-old is largely unknown even in his homeland, he wields increasing influence inside the Kremlin, according to sources who spoke with OCCRP’s partner IStories.

Over the past three decades, Mironov has risen from the ranks of the presidential security service to become one of Putin’s closest advisers — and sources inside Russia say his power goes far beyond his official titles. One source said Putin even calls him “my little son.”

Mironov belongs to an elite class of former security service officers who have ascended to the top of Putin’s power pyramid in recent years, and reaped financial benefits along the way. Putin began to bring this cohort into government after mass protests rocked Moscow in 2011 and 2012 demanding political reform.

   

Dmitry Mironov.

After over two decades in the Federal Guard Service (also known by the Russian abbreviation FSO), which offers protection to the president and other senior officials, Mironov was elevated to a key department in the interior ministry in 2014 and has since held a series of roles bringing him closer to Putin and the heart of government.

In addition to his post as presidential aide, he is now the Kremlin’s chief personnel officer, approving or rejecting candidates for senior posts across government and the civil service. The Commission on Civil Service he has led since 2022 is charged with preparing proposals for the president regarding senior personnel.

“In a bureaucratic system, this is extremely important,” said Alexandra Prokopenko, a researcher at the Carnegie Russia Eurasia Center in Berlin. “Through this commission, any appointments can be stopped.”

Two sources inside Russia who spoke to OCCRP’s partner IStories on condition of anonymity said Mironov’s duties extend beyond these official responsibilities. They said he is now a highly trusted aide who carries out “special projects” for the president.

Unlike other Putin allies, whose influence is tied to their accumulation of financial or other resources, the status of former bodyguards is based on the “‘personal trust’ of their patron-in-chief,” said Nikolay Petrov, a Russia expert and visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Petrov, who has written about the rise of this class, says the group has become increasingly influential as Putin has closed ranks around his inner circle in recent years, particularly since the pandemic and his full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“Those guys are not efficient in terms of professional services except for serving as bodyguards, but what is more important, they are absolutely controlled by him,” he told OCCRP, describing the former guards as Putin’s “avatars.”

“Putin, who is very good in making personnel decisions, sees this quite well.”

While some of these former bodyguards are well-known in Russia, Mironov has largely flown under the radar.

After learning of his prominence, reporters probed further and found a pattern: as Mironov’s star has risen, so have the fortunes of his family, whose businesses work closely with the state.

In particular, his younger brother’s construction firm has welcomed a windfall of multi-million-dollar contracts from the state-controlled energy giant Gazprom and its subsidiaries.

Ilia Shumanov, the director of Transparency International’s Russian chapter, described the disbursement of state contracts as one of the ways that benefits can be extended to those within Putin’s inner circle.

While Mironov is not directly involved in supervising Gazprom, his high status may have afforded him the “power to lobby [for] his brother’s company to receive state contracts,” he added.

The office of Russia’s presidential administration and Gazprom did not respond to questions sent by reporters.

The Road to Power

Mironov’s route to the top has taken him from presidential road-trip wingman to uncomfortable postings as a public official to his current role managing appointments across the Kremlin.

Born in 1968 in the southeast city of Khabarovsk, Mironov’s father and grandfather were colonels, with the latter anointed a “Hero of the Soviet Union” for his service in World War II.

Mironov initially followed in their footsteps, studying at the Moscow Higher Combined Arms Command School. In 1990 he was selected as a cadet for the Kremlin Regiment, a special military unit that protects the government and state officials.

His first job, according to one of IStories’ sources, involved managing cultural and sporting events for the regiment.

Mironov still keeps his sporting hand in: He plays in the amateur Night Hockey League set up by Putin in 2011, in which Russian officials, businessmen, and former hockey pros face off in evening matches on the ice.

According to a 2016 interview Mironov gave to a Russian newspaper, he and the president usually play on opposing teams.

While it’s not known when the pair first met, they were introduced by Oleg Klimentiev, a member of the Presidential Security Service, according to an IStories source. (Klimentiev is another former guard who has benefited under Putin and has served as first deputy director of the Federal Guard Service.)

Mironov later became an adjutant — a designation within the Presidential Security Service for people who fulfill special tasks rather than providing physical protection for the president.

While the specific duties involved could not be confirmed, another former bodyguard once described the president’s adjutants to a Russian newspaper as “a select caste of people.”

According to Petrov, an “adjutant can serve [as] a moderator to convey [the] president’s orders and to track their implementation.”

During this period, he was also seen by Putin’s side on various outings. In 2010, when the president drove 2,000 km from Khabarovsk to Chita in a yellow Lada Kalina, a Russian-manufactured car, Mironov was photographed with Putin. The following year, Mironov accompanied Putin to a mourning event in the city of Yaroslavl after its entire “Lokomotiv” ice hockey team died in a plane crash.

Putin began to move his bodyguards into the government itself as he faced street protests in 2011 and 2012, raising fears that discontent was also simmering within the administration.

His trust in the guards was shaped in part by their years of physical proximity, said Petrov, explaining that the round-the-clock nature of the job, and the frequent travel required, prevented them from building other relationships or alliances.

This “made them absolutely loyal and absolutely dependent [on] Putin and nobody else. And this is their huge advantage in Putin’s eyes.”

In some cases, they were brought into government to perform “the function of ‘cleaners’ within law enforcement agencies,” he has noted.

One of Mironov’s early assignments offers an example. In 2014 he was appointed head of the Interior Ministry’s Main Directorate for Economic Security and Countering Corruption after the bureau had been rocked by a series of graft scandals, leading to the arrest of its former chief.

Mironov, in comparison, was seen as tidy, free from scandal, and generally “stayed away from groups that, due to certain circumstances, were formed within the Interior Ministry,” according to reporting by the Russian newspaper Kommersant at the time.

Starting in 2016, another reshuffle saw Mironov and other former bodyguards and adjutants dispatched to take over the civilian posts of governors across the country — even though they sometimes had no experience in government administration. Mironov was assigned to lead the Yaroslavl region, which borders Moscow, where voters had turned against Putin’s United Russia party.

Official Benefits

David Wilson