The former employee of the presidential security service is one of Vladimir Putin’s most loyal associates.

Dmitry Mironov is a mysterious figure. In recent years, the Russian official has rarely appeared in public - most often with a gloomy expression on his face.

However, as sources in Russia told OCCRP partner Important Stories, 55-year-old Mironov, who is little known even in his home country, wields significant influence in the Kremlin.

Over the past three decades, Mironov has risen from a member of the presidential security detail to one of Putin’s closest allies: sources say his power is not limited to official titles. One says Putin calls his aide "sonny."

Mironov is one of a group of former secret service officers who have risen to the top of Putin’s power pyramid in recent years and have become rich in the process. Putin began introducing his security detail into the government after mass protests demanding political reforms took place in Moscow in 2011 and 2012.

In 2014, Mironov, who spent more than twenty years in the Federal Protective Service (FSO RF, responsible for protecting the president and high-ranking officials), was appointed to a key department of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. Since then, he has held various government positions, gradually moving closer to Putin.

Now he is not only an aide to the president, but also the Kremlin’s chief personnel officer, who selects candidates for high positions in the government and state agencies. The Civil Service Commission, which Mironov has headed since 2022, decides which applications will end up on the president’s desk.

“This is a very important process in the bureaucratic system,” says Alexandra Prokopenko, a research fellow at the Carnegie Berlin Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies. “Through this commission, any appointment can be stopped.”

Two sources in Russia, who spoke to Important Stories on condition of anonymity, assure that Mironov’s duties do not end there. According to them, he enjoys the president’s great trust and carries out "special tasks" for him.

Unlike other Putin associates, whose influence is based on wealth or other resources, the former bodyguards’ position is based on "the commander in chief’s personal trust," explains Nikolai Petrov, a Russia expert and visiting fellow at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs.

Petrov, who exposed the class of officials last year, says they have grown in influence in recent years as Putin has narrowed his circle of trusted confidants, particularly amid the pandemic and full-scale war in Ukraine.

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“Professionally, they are useful only as bodyguards, but the important thing is that they obey him without question,” Petrov explained to OCCRP, calling the former security officials Putin’s “avatars.” “Putin is very good at making personnel appointments, he understands everything very well.”

Dmitry Mironov (right) in Yaroslavl demonstrates local products to Russian President Vladimir Putin

 

Some of the president’s former bodyguards are well known in Russia, but Mironov tries to keep a low profile.

Nevertheless, journalists have identified a pattern: as Mironov rose through the ranks, the well-being of his relatives, who work closely with state-owned enterprises, grew.

Thus, his younger brother’s construction company received numerous multimillion-dollar contracts from the energy giant Gazprom and its subsidiaries.

According to Ilya Shumanov, director of the Russian division of Transparency International, lucrative government contracts are one type of preference for members of Putin’s inner circle.

According to him, although Mironov is not directly connected to Gazprom, his status gives him “the opportunity to lobby the interests of his brother’s company.”

The presidential administration and Gazprom did not respond to journalists’ questions.

The Road to the Top of Power

Before reaching the pinnacle of power and becoming the Kremlin’s chief personnel officer, Mironov worked in the presidential security service and headed one of Russia’s regions.

He was born in 1968 in Khabarovsk. His father and grandfather were military men and rose to the rank of colonel: the latter even received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for his participation in the Great Patriotic War.

Dmitry followed in their footsteps and graduated from the Moscow Higher Combined Arms Command School. In 1990, he was selected for the Kremlin Regiment, responsible for protecting government officials.

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As one of the sources of Important Stories said, at the dawn of his career, Mironov was responsible for organizing sports and festive events.

He still enjoys sports, playing with Russian officials, businessmen and former professional athletes in the amateur Night Hockey League, which Putin founded in 2011.

In 2016, Mironov told Komsomolskaya Pravda that he and the president usually play for different teams.

According to a source for Important Stories, Mironov was introduced to Putin (it is not known exactly when) by Oleg Klimentyev, an employee of the presidential security service (another former bodyguard who rose to the rank of first deputy director of the FSO under Putin).

Later, Mironov became an adjutant, a rank in the presidential security service given to individuals who carry out various special tasks.

It is not known exactly what they do, but another former bodyguard once told reporters that presidential aides are a “special caste.”

Petrov says that “an adjutant can play the role of an intermediary who transmits presidential orders and monitors their implementation.”

During that period, Mironov repeatedly appeared with Putin at various events. In 2010, he accompanied the prime minister when he traveled 2,000 kilometers from Khabarovsk to Chita in a yellow Lada Kalina. The following year, Mironov went with Putin to Yaroslavl for a mourning event after the death of the Lokomotiv hockey team in a plane crash.

Dmitry Mironov (right), Vladimir Putin (center) and Lokomotiv hockey club president Yuri Yakovlev (left) visit a memorial to the Russian hockey team Lokomotiv Yaroslavl in 2016 in Yaroslavl, Russia

 

Putin began introducing bodyguards into the government amid protests in 2011 and 2012, raising suspicions that discontent was growing within the administration.

Petrov said the president’s trust in his guards is partly due to their physical proximity: 24-hour duty and frequent travel limit the opportunity to build relationships or partnerships outside of work.

So "they remain unconditionally loyal to Putin, which he perceives as an advantage."

Petrov says that in some cases, security officials were brought into the government “to clean out law enforcement agencies.”

This is what happened with Mironov. In 2014, he became the head of the Main Directorate for Economic Security and Anti-Corruption – his predecessor was arrested after a series of corruption scandals.

“Mironov was not involved in any scandalous stories, tried not to participate in departmental intrigues and generally stayed away from the groups that, due to certain circumstances, formed within the Ministry of Internal Affairs,” Kommersant explained the appointment.

In 2016, Mironov and several other former bodyguards took up governorships in different regions of the country, although many of them often had no management experience. Mironov headed the Yaroslavl region, which is adjacent to Moscow, where Putin’s United Russia lost the elections.

Mironov, an outsider in the Yaroslavl region, which used to be run by locals, seemed uncomfortable in the spotlight. He avoided public events, rarely met with local officials or the media, and had trouble speaking publicly.

Nevertheless, with it the region received an advantage: access to Moscow.

As local media reported, immediately after Mironov became governor, the Finance Ministry issued a large loan to the region. And state-owned Gazprom, which reportedly closed its investment program in Yaroslavl due to the region’s debts, announced that it would spend about 3.3 billion rubles ($58.7 million) on gasification of the region.

Residents of Yaroslavl began to see the president more often. During the first two years of Mironov’s work, Putin came four times; under the previous governor, he visited the city only once. Vladimir Vladimirovich visited Crimea more often.

Putin once publicly addressed the governor as "Dima," confirming their closeness (later in the same conversation, Putin, dissatisfied with the answer to his question, returned to Mironov’s full name).

Vladimir Putin (left) and Dmitry Mironov (seated at the head of the table) at a meeting when Mironov was governor of the Yaroslavl region in Russia. During the meeting, Putin called Mironov "Dima"

 

In 2021, Mironov returned to Moscow and received several new appointments, including as an aide to the president and head of the presidential commission on service in government agencies, including the Ministry of Justice, the prosecutor’s office, the Investigative Committee, the Ministry of Civil Defense, Emergencies and Elimination of Consequences of Natural Disasters, and the Federal Penitentiary Service. The commission also processes applications for high-ranking military positions.

In 2022, he became the Kremlin’s chief personnel officer. At the same time, he was appointed head of the Commission under the President of the Russian Federation on Civil Service Issues.

A former government official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told reporters that this is one of the key positions in the presidential administration:

"All important appointments in the government go through it (the commission). Putin has the final say, but it is this department that places the files on his desk."

Despite his serious official positions and influence, Mironov tries to avoid public attention.

He abandoned the Facebook page where he reported on the governor’s work. Apparently, the official did not even notice that the account was hacked: now there are several erotic photos there.

From time to time, his name appears in brief internal government announcements regarding meetings of the committee under his control.

As it turns out, his relatives are meanwhile getting rich from deals with the government.

Mironov’s younger brother receives multimillion-dollar contracts from state companies

Mironov doesn’t like to talk about his younger brother Evgeny.

“Evgeny has his own business,” he briefly answered a Komsomolskaya Pravda journalist when asked about his brother’s profession in 2016.

Important Stories learned that Yevgeny Mironov’s enterprises are doing quite well, largely thanks to contracts with state-owned companies.

In 2015, Evgeny acquired a stake in Tekhnospetsstroy: the company, which lays gas pipelines in Russia, at that time had just over 200 million rubles ($3.5 million) in annual income.

After that, Tekhnospetsstroy’s profits increased significantly: according to publicly available documents, the firm received contracts worth at least 28.9 billion rubles (more than $450 million) as part of Power of Siberia, Gazprom’s project to build a gas pipeline to China.

In 2022, the co-owner of Technospetsstroy died, and Evgeny became the sole owner of the business. The company’s revenues continued to grow and in 2023 amounted to almost 19 billion rubles ($211.5 million).

Journalists learned some interesting details. Although Gazprom announced in 2021 that Gazstroyprom would become its main construction contractor, Tekhnospetsstroy continued to receive contracts from the gas monopoly’s subsidiaries. In fact, in 2023, Tekhnospetsstroy received almost all of its revenue from Gazprom’s subsidiaries.

The company did not perform the work itself, however — according to documents obtained by Vazhnye Istorii, it hired Gazstroyprom to perform the construction work. It follows from them that Gazprom’s subsidiary ultimately received almost half of the cost of the contracts. The question arises: why was Tekhnospetsstroy needed?

Tekhnospetsstroy and Gazprom did not answer journalists’ questions.

Gazprom’s drilling rig at the Yamburg gas field, located in the Arctic region of Siberia

 

According to Shumanov of Transparency International, “it is suspicious that Mironov’s brother’s company is receiving multibillion-dollar contracts from Gazprom.” He noted that it is impossible to assess the nature of the subcontracting agreements with Gazstroyprom without knowing their details.

Investigators learned that Evgeny also makes money from a partnership with the state through the construction company SK RusTrest, of which he is a co-owner (according to publicly available documents).

The company’s main client is Russian Railways, but it also receives contracts from MOEK, a subsidiary of Gazprom, and Mosvodokanal, which signed agreements with RusTrest worth 2.7 billion rubles ($36 million) in 2020-2022.

According to financial reports, in 2023, RusTrest earned 11.6 billion rubles ($130 million) and paid 1.58 billion rubles (over $17 million) in dividends to its owners. Yevgeny Mironov controls 50 percent of the company’s shares.

In 2018, OCCRP revealed that Yevgeny Mironov was part of a group, mostly made up of former Putin bodyguards, that bought land outside Moscow at bargain-basement prices.