Foundations linked to former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev have amassed about $850 million since the start of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine more than three years ago, Radio Free Europe's Russian research unit Systema has discovered.
The rise in the foundations' wealth coincides with the resurgence of Medvedev's wartime image, whom President Vladimir Putin dismissed from the post of prime minister in 2020.
However, he has found an audience of millions of followers in his new role as an "online attacker," while still maintaining a role in the government as deputy chairman of Putin's Security Council and chairman of the ruling party, United Russia.
Medvedev, once a gentle and moderate figure, has become an ardent supporter of the war, and holds harsh and hateful stances towards Kiev and the West on social media.
Overall, 15 foundations linked to Medvedev received about 28 billion rubles, or $424 million, between 2015 and 2021, the last year before the full Russian occupation begins in February 2022, according to financial documents reviewed by Systema.
From 2022 to 2024, this amount increased to more than 130 billion rubles, or $1.39 billion. More than half of this money was received in the past year alone.
The foundations had a total of 23.5 billion rubles, or $316 million, in their accounts at the end of 2021 and 86.4 billion rubles, or $850 million, at the end of 2024, the data show.
The funds have been distributed for various purposes, including to Russian forces fighting in Ukraine and real estate projects - which appear to have links to Medvedev - from St. Petersburg to the Black Sea coast, Systema revealed.
The foundations do not publicly identify their donors, and only two of the 14 still in existence currently have websites. One of them, Nasha Pravda (Our Truth), says it has spent 2.4 billion rubles over the past two years to support the “special military operation,” Putin’s forced term for the war in Ukraine, with spending on thousands of drones, night vision goggles, generators, medical equipment and other supplies.
Cooperation with United Russia
Nasha Pravda was created on Medvedev’s initiative, according to the head of the United Russia central executive committee, Alexei Sidyakin. The foundation has collaborated with the party — in February 2025, for example, they jointly donated equipment worth more than 14 million rubles ($177,000) to a Russian military unit, according to the foundation’s website.
Medvedev's 29-year-old son, Ilya, who joined the party in September 2022, attended the ceremony and was introduced as a project director in the same party committee.
Many foundations do not provide details about how they spend their funds.
But evidence shows that some were used to directly or indirectly support real estate projects linked to Medvedev - a topic of great public interest since a report by the now-banned Anti-Corruption Foundation (FBK), led by Alexei Navalny, revealed a network of luxury properties, yachts, vineyards and other assets attributed to the then-prime minister.
"This regime will seriously regret what it has done," said Russian opposition politician Alexei Navalny in 2019.
The FBK report mentioned possible Medvedev properties in the town of Plios on the Volga River, in the Kursk region, in Rubliovka (a luxury neighborhood on the outskirts of Moscow), in Sochi, a wine producer called Skalisty Bereg, and several yachts. Systema found that most of these properties are still linked to foundations with ties to Medvedev.
In March, Nasha Pravda partnered with Skalisty Bereg, which has vineyards near the seaside resort of Anapa, to help clean up after a major oil spill in December. Skalisty Bereg is controlled by foundations linked to Medvedev, and Ilya Medvedev is on its board of directors.
In December 2022, a firm called FKK – owned by a foundation linked to Medvedev – bought a management company, Makna, that ran a dilapidated resort called Shingary, just 7 minutes from the sea.
The resort's demolition began a few months later, and FKK purchased several nearby plots and leased land from Makna, suggesting a new development, although it is not clear what will be built.
Near his hometown of St. Petersburg, a foundation called Nevsky bought a two-story villa on the outskirts of the city in 2023 – and in 2024 added a cottage in Pavlovsk, where Medvedev spent summers as a child and which he visited as president in 2009.
Medvedev did not respond to Systema's requests for comment, as did the Nasha Pravda and Nevsky foundations. Skalisty Bereg also did not respond, while the FKK chief executive hung up the phone as soon as he heard a journalist calling and did not respond to questions sent by text message.
The outbreak of a war
Since the full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Medvedev's public image has undergone a profound transformation. As president from 2008 to 2012, in the period between Putin's two terms, he presented himself as a relative liberal, a reformer, and a supporter of greater freedoms.
Russians who had hoped for change felt betrayed when Putin returned as president in 2012, relegating Medvedev to second place as prime minister. Under an increasingly fierce opposition crackdown, Russia invaded Crimea and took control of parts of eastern Ukraine in 2014, sparking a war that led to full-scale occupation eight years later.
Ukrainian Defense Minister Rustem Umerov (left), who led the Ukrainian delegation, accompanied by Deputy Foreign Minister Serhiy Kyslytsya (second left) and delegation member Oleksandr Bevz (right) at a press conference in Istanbul on June 2.
Deemed by many as weak and irrelevant after he left the prime minister's post in January 2020, Medvedev's public trust rating was below 23 percent at the end of 2021, compared to 65 percent for Putin, according to the state-funded VTsIOM poll.
In VTsIOM results on June 1, Medvedev's trust rating had doubled to 45.7 percent, the highest after Putin and Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin. His Telegram channel, which he launched a few weeks after the start of the full lockdown, became the most followed in Russia by the end of 2022, with posts now receiving an average of over 1.8 million views.
Medvedev's social media posts are often filled with harsh, insulting language toward Western governments, dire warnings about Kiev, and veiled threats of nuclear strikes. In 2023, he came up with the idea of bombing the Bundestag in Berlin.
Last week, he wrote on Telegram that Russia's goal in the first direct peace talks with Ukraine in three years was not peace, but "ensuring a quick victory and the complete destruction of the government in Kiev."
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./ REL (A2 Televizion)
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