American Dmitry Simes became Channel One’s highest-paid host...

American Dmitry Simes became Channel One’s highest-paid host. He earns up to 8 million rubles a month

American political scientist Dmitry Simes, who moved to Russia, has been earning up to 8 million rubles a month at Channel One since 2025, Verstka found.

The latest financial details of Simes’s cooperation with Channel One were disclosed by the U.S. Justice Department in September 2024, when it opened a criminal case against the host for working for a sanctioned TV channel. According to the prosecution, his monthly salary up to July 2022 was $67,000, but starting in September Channel One began paying Simes in rubles.

As Verstka found from a Social Fund leak, starting in September 2022 Simes began receiving his salary from Channel One as a Russian taxpayer, and it amounted to 5 million rubles a month. It remained at that level until the end of 2023, when he, according to the U.S. Justice Department, asked for a 20% pay raise due to the unfavorable ruble exchange rate.

The channel likely satisfied the host’s demand: already in 2024 his annual income at Channel One in rubles rose by 22%, from 61 million rubles to 74 million, the leaks show.

In 2025, Simes’s salary in rubles increased by another 31% to 8 million rubles a month and 97 million rubles a year, Verstka found from the Social Fund leak. Most likely, that amount included year-end bonuses, since in the first half of 2026 his average monthly income was already 6.6 million rubles.

In total, over nearly four years, from September 2022 to July 1, 2026, Simes earned more than 291 million rubles (more than $3.5 million) at Channel One, according to the data studied by Verstka. Thanks to this, by the beginning of 2025 Simes had accumulated 61 million rubles in an account at T-Bank.

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