Konstantin Kilimnik

Konstantin Viktorovich Kilimnik (Константин Викторович Килимник; Костянтин Вікторович Килимник; born 27 April 1970) is a Russian–Ukrainian political consultant.

Kilimnik was born on 27 April 1970 at Kryvyi Rih, Ukraine, Soviet Union.

Fluent in Russian and Ukrainian before his service in the Soviet Army, he became fluent in Swedish and English as a linguist at the Moscow Military Institute of the Ministry of Defense, which trained interpreters for the Soviet Union's Main Intelligence Directorate, known as the GRU of the Soviet Union.

He was a translator in the Soviet Army and worked closely with its GRU.

He took Russian citizenship after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

He worked in Sweden as an interpreter for a Russian arms dealer.

Kilimnik worked for the International Republican Institute (IRI) in Moscow from 1995 to early 2005; the IRI is an organisation which receives funding from the United States government to support democracy.

According to anonymous sources, when applying for his position with the IRI, he responded to the question about how he learned English by stating that the "Russian military intelligence" taught him and he became known among Moscow political operatives as "Kostya, the guy from the GRU".

In 1997, he traveled to the United States using a Russian diplomatic passport.

They began working for Viktor Yanukovych after the 2004 Orange Revolution cost him the Presidency.

The New York Times reported two former IRI colleagues said Kilimnik was dismissed in April 2005 after the chief of Russian Federation's Federal Security Service gave a speech discussing internal private meetings at the institute.

Kilimnik was suspected of leaking details of an IRI meeting in Bratislava, Slovakia.

Recruited by Philip M. Griffin as a translator for businessman Rinat Akhmetov and seeking a better income than available at IRI, Kilimnik met Paul Manafort in 2005 and became an employee of Manafort's consulting firm.

After the end of his association with IRI in April 2005, he lived and worked in Kyiv and Moscow while his wife and two children remained in Moscow living in a modest house near the Sheremetyevo International Airport.

Some reports say Kilimnik ran the Kyiv office of Manafort's firm, Davis Manafort International, and was Manafort's right-hand man in Kyiv.

With help from Manafort and Kilimnik, Yanukovych became president in 2010.

Around 2010, Kilimnik collaborated with Rinat Akhmetshin when the Washington-based lobbyist was trying to sell a book disparaging one of Yanukovych's opponents.

Kilimnik and Manafort actively assisted Ukrainian oligarchs and Russian oligarchs who are close to the Kremlin and Vladimir Putin.

Also, they worked to ensure that Viktor Yanukovych and his Party of Regions would reduce and eventually sever Ukraine's ties to the United States and Europe so that Ukraine would become much closer to Russia, the Kremlin, and Vladimir Putin.

From 2011 to 2013, with liaison to Viktor Yanukovych's chief of staff Serhiy Lyovochkin, Kilimnik, Manafort, Alan Friedman, Eckart Sager, who was a one time CNN producer, and Rick Gates advised on an international public relations strategy.

This effort supported the administration of President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych.

Yanukovych hired Manafort's company Global Endeavour, a St. Vincent and Grenadines based consulting and lobbying company, which during the end of Yanukovych's presidency transferred $750,000 out of Ukraine and also paid Kilimnik $53,000 during November and December 2013.

When Yanukovych fled the country, Manafort and Kilimnik gained employment with the Ukrainian party Opposition Bloc which is backed by the same oligarchs who backed Yanukovych.

At some point, Opposition Bloc ceased paying Manafort's firm but even though the non-payment forced Manafort's firm to shut down their Kyiv office, Kilimnik continued to advise the party while working to collect unpaid fees for Manafort's firm.

In the United States, he became a person of interest in multiple investigations regarding Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, particularly due to his ties with Paul Manafort, an American political consultant, who was a campaign chairman for Donald Trump.

Kilimnik was reported by CNN, The New York Times and The Atlantic to be "Person A" listed in court documents filed by the Special Counsel against Manafort.

He is also believed to be Person A in court documents filed in the criminal indictment of Alex van der Zwaan.

In 2017, Kilimnik said he had no connection to Russian or any other intelligence service.

Kilimnik told RFE/RL in February 2017 that he spent 90% of his time inside the Presidential administration, and assisted Manafort.

In a February 22, 2017, interview with Christopher Miller of Radio Free Europe, Kilimnik explained the existence of a peace effort between Russia and Ukraine called the "Mariupol Plan" in which Viktor Yanukovych would return as president of Russia's illegally controlled regions and Crimea in Ukraine.

Andriy Artemenko's peace plan was known as the "New initiative for Peace".

In 2017, Kilimnik helped Manafort write an op-ed for a Kyiv newspaper.

A journalist in Ukraine, Oleg Voloshyn, has disputed this assertion stating that he and Manafort wrote the op-ed and that he e-mailed the rough draft to Kilimnik.

The op-ed may have violated a gag order issued against Manafort by a US court and may have been a breach of Manafort's bail conditions.

Kilimnik was indicted by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's grand jury on 8 June 2018 on charges of obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice by attempting to tamper with a witness on behalf of Manafort.

United States intelligence community analysis released in March 2021 accused Kilimnik of being one of the proxies of Russian intelligence who promoted and laundered misleading or unsubstantiated narratives about Joe Biden to US media organizations, US officials, and prominent US individuals, including some close to former President Trump and his administration" to benefit the 2020 Trump presidential campaign. In April 2021, the US Treasury Department sanctioned Kilimnik for providing Russian intelligence with "sensitive information on polling and campaign strategy" provided to him by Manafort from the Trump campaign, and for making the unjustified claim that Ukraine, rather than Russia, had interfered in the 2016 election.

Kilimnik himself told The New York Times in April 2018 that he had been dismissed for having freelanced as an interpreter for Manafort, which was effectively confirmed by a spokesman for the IRI who said such an action ran counter to the organization's code of ethics.

The April 2019 Mueller Report concluded Kilimnik was connected to Russian intelligence agencies, while the August 2020 final report on 2016 election interference from the Senate Intelligence Committee characterized him as a "Russian intelligence officer".

Nearly a year later in February 2019, an IRI representative declined to say whether Kilimnik leaving the organisation had any connection to Kilimnik's alleged links to Russian intelligence.

In the Mueller Report, a former colleague is reported to have told the FBI that Kilimnik was fired because of his strong links to Russian intelligence services.