A wealthy Russian former MMA fighter who beat up his girlfriend while she was FaceTiming Barron Trump has been jailed today for four years and warned he could be deported.
Matvei Rumiantsev, 22, was convicted of assaulting the woman in a jealous rage at his London flat while she was on a video call with Donald Trump‘s youngest son.
Rumiantsev was also found guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice by calling the young woman from a police station after his arrest and writing to her from Belmarsh prison to convince her to drop the case.
But he was found not guilty of two counts of rape, one count of strangulation and one count of assault by beating.
His trial heard how the victim believes Barron ‘saved her life’ during an hour-long attack, and that his FaceTime call to her that night early last year was a ‘sign from God’.
Barron, who turned 20 a week ago, spoke directly with a 999 operator in London from Florida when he heard what he thought was Rumiantsev repeatedly punching his friend at the flat in Canary Wharf.
He told police: ‘I just got a call from a girl – she’s getting beat up’.
Rumianstev later admitted it was ‘hard for (him) not to be jealous’ of Barron’s ‘persistent’ contact with his victim during late 2024 and early 2025. Barron told British police that he is ‘very close’ to the woman who he met online.
At Snaresbrook Crown Court on Friday morning, Rumiantsev was sentenced by Mr Justice Bennathan to four years in prison for assault occasioning actual bodily harm and perverting the course of justice.
‘You are a man given to jealousy and you have a temper’, said the judge, before criticising Rumiantsev for being ‘totally unrepentant’ and failing to accept blame for the attack.
‘Your lack of insight and empathy was apparent at trial. You continue to try to blame the complainant for everything that has happened.’
The judge said Rumiantsev may be deported from the UK as a consequence of his convictions.
Matvei Rumiantsev (pictured) has been jailed for beating up his girlfriend while she was on a FaceTime call with Barron Trump. He was cleared of raping her.
Barron, who turned 20 a week ago, spoke directly with a 999 operator in London from Florida when he heard what he thought was Rumiantsev repeatedly punching his friend at the flat in Canary Wharf
He pointed to a letter from Rumiantsev said his actions that night had been ‘inappropriate’, telling him: ‘That’s a very long way from you facing up to the simple truth of what happened that night.’
He said the evidence shows Rumiantsev had repeatedly struck the woman over the course of an hour, dragged her by her hair when she tried to seek help, and leaving her believing she ‘might die’.
After his arrest, Rumiantsev made ‘repeated efforts’ to try to avoid justice by convincing the woman to withdraw her allegations, with a phone call from the police station and a letter to a friend while he was in prison.
Rumiantsev was jealous of the American’s relationship with the woman and flew into a rage when he tried to phone her earlier that evening.
He then answered a video call from the President’s son on the woman’s phone, showed Barron her face then grabbed her hair and pushed her to the floor – shouting ‘You are not worth anything’, Snaresbrook Crown Court in north-east London heard.
Rumiantsev called the woman a ‘slut’ and a ‘whore’ and kicked her in the stomach when she was on the floor next to the fridge, jurors were told.
Barron spent some time working out how to reach emergency services in Britain before telling a call handler: ‘I just got a call from a girl, you know. She’s getting beaten up.’
Jurors were played a recording of the conversation, in which he gave the woman’s address, then added: ‘It’s really an emergency, please. I got a call from her with a guy beating her up.’
Barron told the call handler he knew the woman through social media, after being ticked off by the operator for refusing to answer questions.
The call handler told the US President’s son: ‘Can you stop being rude and actually answer my questions? If you want to help the person, you’ll answer my questions clearly and precisely, thank you. So how do you know her?’
Barron answered: ‘I met her on social media. She’s getting really badly beat up and the call was about eight minutes ago, I don’t know what could have happened by now.’
He added, ‘So sorry for being rude’, in the call was made at 2.23am on January 18 last year.
Russian national Matvei Rumiantsev was accused of repeatedly punching Barron’s female friend in a flat in London while President Trump’s son was on a FaceTime call to her from the US
Rumiantsev (pictured centre) denied allegations including assault, two counts of rape and intentional strangulation
He has been credited as having raised the alarm during Rumiantsev’s trial at Snaresbrook Crown Court in London.
Bodycam footage from police at the scene showed the woman telling officers: ‘I am friends with Barron Trump, Donald Trump’s son.’
One of the officers can then be heard telling a colleague: ‘So apparently this informant from America is likely to be Donald Trump’s son.’
The woman is then asked to call Barron back, as the American explained to officers he could see her crying and being struck during the FaceTime call.
He told officers: ‘I called you guys – that was the best thing I could do. I wasn’t going to call back and threaten things to him because that would just make the situation worse.’
Giving evidence, the woman said: ‘He [Barron Trump] helped save my life. That call was like a sign from God at that moment.’
Police attended Rumiantsev’s home in Poplar, east London, in the early hours of January 18, 2025, following two 999 calls from the alleged victim and one from Barron.
The woman told officers she had been slapped, punched, kicked and strangled during the assault.
Barron Trump (centre) is pictured here with US President Donald Trump (right) and Vice-President JD Vance (left) at his father’s inauguration in Washington DC on January 20 2025
While in custody, Rumiantsev tricked officers into allowing him to phone the woman.
He was overheard saying words to the effect of ‘While you are sleeping in your warm bed, I’m in jail,’ prosecutor Serena Gates said.
Eight days later, the Russian made a call from prison to a friend named Arsen, saying he had already posted him a letter that he should give to the woman, in which he pleaded with her to withdraw her statement.
The victim withdrew her statement but later retracted this, telling police the original account was true and that Rumiantsev had also sexually assaulted her on two occasions.
She explained that the Russian would deliberately get her so drunk that he could have sex with her without her being able to consent.
She said she had asked him why he did this to her and he responded: ‘You never want to do this with me so I make you drink and do this to you.’
Sasha Wass KC, defending, described the victim’s accounts of the alleged attacks as ‘untrue and fabricated’.
Rumiantsev was remanded in custody until a sentence hearing on March 27.
Trial judge Joel Bennathan told the court Rumiantsev should expect a custodial sentence and therefore the probation service should provide reports.
Rumiantsev is the second son of a well-known Russian coffee tycoon from a military family.
He attended an elite £80,000-a-year international boarding school in Cambridge.
His father Sergey Rumyantsev, 53, is founder of a prominent Russian business success story called One Price Coffee, previously called One Bucks Coffee, until US coffee giant Starbucks challenged the name in court – forcing them to drop the ‘Bucks’ from their name.
Rumiantsev’s father is listed in Companies House records as a director of One Price Coffee and was born into a military family in Severomorsk, a closed Soviet naval town in the Arctic region of Murmansk.
Sergey attended the Tver Suvorov Military School from the age of 14, a prestigious cadet institution exclusively for the children of military families.
Matvei’s grandfather Vitaly Rumyantsev, now 86, was a senior naval officer, believed to be a captain.
The family is wealthy and successful in Vladimir Putin’s Russia.
Before founding One Price Coffee, among other jobs, Sergey worked for British American Tobacco in sales, followed by Nike in international brand management and wholesale operations.
It is believed Matvei came to Britain to study for GCSEs then A Levels and attended the elite Abbey College Cambridge, where boarding fees are £80,000 per year.
He can be seen in a college 2021 Alumni Reunion photo.
The school is known as an elite academy for the children of wealthy foreigners and a likely passport to good UK universities.
