He previously served as the 30th Prime Minister of Russia from 23 March to 23 August 1998 under President Boris Yeltsin, and was head of the Rosatom nuclear energy company between 2005 and 2016.

[1] Sergei Kiriyenko, son of a Jewish father,[2] was born in Sukhumi, the capital of the Abkhaz ASSR, and grew up in Sochi, in southern Russia.

[2] After graduation from high school, Kiriyenko enrolled in the shipbuilding faculty at the Nizhny Novgorod (Gorky) Water Transport Engineers Institute, where his divorced father taught.

[3] Kiriyenko's premiership was noted in hindsight for the appointment of Vladimir Putin as Director of the Federal Security Service, eventually leading to his accession to the presidency in 2000.

[7] In 2004, Novaya Gazeta printed seven articles by columnist Georgy Rozhnov, which accused Kiriyenko of embezzling US$4.8 billion of IMF funds in 1998 when he was Prime Minister of Russia.

[8] The newspaper based the accusations on a letter allegedly written to Colin Powell and signed by US Congressmen Philip Crane, Mike Pence, Charlie Norwood, Dan Burton and Henry Bonilla and posted on the website of the American Defense Council.

[11] Kiriyenko was appointed to head Rosatom, the Federal Atomic Energy Agency, on 30 November 2005 by Mikhail Fradkov's Second Cabinet during the second term of President Vladimir Putin.

[15] After a delay of some three years, Kiriyenko said 21 August 2010's arrival of nuclear fuel at Iran's Bushehr I marks "an event of crucial importance" that proves that "Russia always fulfills its international obligations."

[19] The position has significant status within the Russian government, with The Moscow Times referring to Kiriyenko as "Putin's right-hand man" and a "gray cardinal" following the appointment.

[20] Kiriyenko spoke publicly about the need to work with Russian youth and their fondness for debauched hip-hop, most notably in response to the crackdown in late 2018.

By June 2022 it was reported by Meduza[23] and Bloomberg News[24] that Kiriyenko had been entrusted with managing the occupied territories, a role that earned him the popular nickname "Viceroy of the Donbas".

[29] In September 2024, the United States Justice Department asserted that Kiriyenko had created some 30 internet domains to spread Russian disinformation, including on Elon Musk’s X which was formerly known as Twitter.

[30][31] While Kiriyenko was in office, he was sanctioned by both the United Kingdom and European Union (amongst the list of six individuals and one organization) on 15 October 2020 over the Alexei Navalny poisoning.