Silicon Valley’s Wealthiest Russian Is Carefully—Very Carefully—Distancing Himself From Putin

Starting in the early 2010s, getting an invitation to Yuri Milner’s château in Los Altos, Calif., meant you’d made it into Silicon Valley’s most exclusive of exclusive circles. Milner is known for placing what proved to be extremely lucrative bets on Airbnb, Alibaba, Twitter, Facebook, and other startups—and for being a prolific patron of the sciences. He was friendly with the late Stephen Hawking and is known to socialize with Mark Zuckerberg and actor Ed Norton. When Milner hosted a watch party for the HBO series Westworld, Google co-founder Sergey Brin showed up.

Milner is also an exceedingly wealthy Russian who started his venture capital career with help from Alisher Usmanov, an Uzbek-born metals magnate close to Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin. Most people who know Milner have shrugged off his connection to a pro-Putin oligarch. Milner’s business—early-stage tech investing—is far removed from the world of the Russian oligarchs who got rich by acquiring state assets at dirt-cheap prices. And the money from Usmanov, as well as from state-controlled VTB Bank PJSC, came during the presidency of Dmitry Medvedev, when the Obama administration was urging a “reset” of Russian-American relations.