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Posted on 11/09/2025 8:16:37 AM PST by TBP
Kirill Dmitriev — Vladmir Putin’s special envoy and head of the Russian Direct Investment Fund — is suddenly ubiquitous.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov has been largely quiet since his maximalist negotiating approach with Team Trump failed. Moscow, presumably largely guided by Lavrov, after winning a concession on Tomahawk missiles, opted to continue Putin’s hardline demands for ending the war in Ukraine ahead of the proposed Trump-Putin summit in Budapest. NATO would have to admit that it was the root cause of the war. Kyiv would have to cede all of the Donbas, and the Armed Forces of Ukraine would essentially have to disband.
None of that is going to happen.
When Russia’s Plan A failed, Putin tried Plan B to get Team Trump’s attention. He did so by testing his latest wunderwaffe.
Trump was not amused. He said Putin’s testing of the Burevestnik nuclear-powered cruise missile was “not appropriate.” Trump also backed out of the meeting in Budapest after Putin’s nuclear shenanigans.
In response, the U.S. Treasury imposed sanctions on Russia’s two largest oil companies, Rosneft and Lukoil. Putin’s oil and energy sector, already under attack by long-range Ukrainian deep strikes against refineries and pipelines, is Moscow’s lifeline to keep funding the Russian dictator’s special military operation in Ukraine.
A week later, Putin tried again. This time, he announced the testing of a nuclear-capable underwater drone codenamed Poseidon. Then yesterday, in response to Trump’s threat to resume nuclear testing, Putin ordered Kremlin officials to “submit plans for the possible resumption of [Russian] nuclear testing.”
Putin’s favorite weapon during the Biden administration was nuclear bluffing. Ditto now during Trump’s second term. Yet this nuclear Kabuki theater is not working on Team Trump.
Enter Dmitriev. Putin knows both he and Lavrov overplayed their hand. Dmitriev’s mission is to find a way back in from the cold. The Stanford- and Harvard-educated 50-year-old appears to have calculated that he can do so by reaching out to the U.S. far right. Fearmongering is his weapon. However, undermining U.S. military support and aid for Ukraine is his mission.
In pursuit of this, he recently met with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (R-Fla.), thanking her for supporting Putin’s ridiculous negotiating demands on Ukraine. He also taped a podcast with Lara Logan wherein he falsely claimed that Putin upholds “traditional [conservative] values.”
But intentionally targeting civilians in Ukraine is not conservative or liberal — it’s a war crime. Ditto for kidnapping Ukrainian children.
As Steven Moore, a former chief of staff on Capitol Hill and the founder of the Ukrainian Freedom Project told us, given “the collapse of Tucker Carlson, who has always been on message for the Kremlin, the Russians are looking for a new way to pretend that they care about America’s culture wars.”
Dmitriev, at least for now, has apparently been tasked by Putin to do just that. He did it again after Zohran Mamdani’s victory in the much-watched New York City mayoral race Tuesday night, when he posted that George Soros had been a key backer of his winning campaign. Later that same evening, he quote-tweeted the New York Post’s cover that was captioned, “On your Marx, get set, Zo!” while saying, “Good Morning, NYC Comrades!”
Not many people had on their Bingo card a Putin stooge warning Americans about a communist in sheep’s clothing. Yet here is Dmitriev, doing just that. Regardless of where you stand on Mamdani, Dmitriev’s goal was not to warn Americans about the NYC mayor-elect or about modern-day communists. Rather, his sole aim is to undermine U.S. support for Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
In order to do that, Dmitriev must undermine growing Republican support for military aid to Ukraine. So Dmitriev is trying to do an end-run around Team Trump to court his conservative base. One way to bond with the American right is to warn about communists. Another is to make false claims about Russian conservative and religious values is another.
Especially given the resurgence of Republican support for U.S. economic and military aid to Ukraine.
As Moore noted in a recent Wall Street Journal op ed, Republican voter support had plunged to only 19 percent by March 2025. Now, it has rebounded to 47 percent among Trump voters.
Notably, as a poll Moore commissioned, Christian Republicans who attend church weekly are one of the key drivers accounting for renewed Republican support. They may be more fully appreciating that Ukraine is a deeply religious country and shares many of America’s core values. As Moore emphasized to us, “80 percent of Ukrainians identify as Christians. Baptists are the third largest Christian denomination in Ukraine after Orthodox and Catholics.” Roughly half of Ukrainians attend religious services at least once a month, compared to fewer than 10 percent of Russians, according to various sources.
Putin has hypocritically framed his war as a religious crusade, and Russian Orthodox Patriarch Kirill declared Putin’s invasion of Ukraine a “Holy War” against a West that has “fallen into Satanism.”
Dmitriev is not fooling Team Trump. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent reportedly sent him packing after he he claimed new U.S. sanctions would have no effect on Russia’s economy.
Yet Dmitriev keeps trying. He seems to think he and Putin have seats at the table of where American culture wars are playing out. Americans of all political stripes should disabuse him of that notion by showing him the door.
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and they still think Americans are dupes.
Difference is, the Soviets duped the Left. Putin is duping the Right.
The globohomos will do anything to prevent Russia and USA becoming allies and re-igniting Christendom.
Globohomos want us to join with globalist open border commie nations being overrun by muslim rapists. The reuniting of Christedom is the globalits greatest fear because they are satanists doing the bidding of their father the devil and are trying desperately to usher in the one world government in preparation for the anti-christ.
That is why they hate Trump so much. It’s not because of ‘tariffs’ or ‘mean tweets’ folks.
True.
Correct.
Good question.
Are you sure you aren’t being duped by The Hill?
Yep, still the same old commies with the same old Gulag. Putin has just downgraded Lavrov, and if Dmitriev is not successful, the same thing will happen to him. Neither gentleman should stand too close to a window.
This article is so biased, yet smucks like you don't even care as much about this nation as you do Ukraine. Instead, all of you remained silent about the invasion of military aged men in this country, yet wailed loudly about us who wanted nothing to fdo with this conglict that should never have been allowed to start, and the solution was an easy solution to obtain, that being to stop threatening Russia with NATO expansion into Ukraine.
Russia is not the Soviet Union and Putin is not Stalin. In fact nrither are even close to being the comparison that people like you continually try to make them to be.
Perhaps you also disagreed with Reagan when he said, trust but verify?
You have provided zero proof that your camparison's are anywhere near accurate.
The fact that this conflict is still ongoing, proves our contention that they are not comparable whatsoever. Russia, is not the former Soviet Union, & Putin is not Stalin.
At one point in time we thought Russia would roll through eastern Ulraine. Either Putin doesn't really want to fight this conflict, or the claim that Russia & Putin are a threat to all of Europe.
The truth is, that Europe and their leaders are the real threat to Europe, as they work towards the goal of submitting to the elites to save them.
The Democrats were not duped by the Soviet Union. Instead the Democrats envied them for their absolute control which is what they wanted for their own self-serving plitical purposes.
The right, which I must make clear is not the Republican Party, but rather the supporters of what the Republican Party perhaps used to be before they became complicit in the rape of America, or they at least hoped that is what they once were. We are not duped by Putin. We have to try and wrest control away from the RINOs who make up the controlled oppostion of the Uni-party. In other words, we have little choice but to do to the Republican Party what the crimanls did to the Democrat Party. We see quite clearly what has transpired, and that forcing Putin to invade Ulraine or roll over a& capitulate, was a poorly designed attempt to make Russia fall. It was poorly designed because it really wasn't expecting Ukraine to fight as solidily as they have, even though we tied their hands because of the fear of starting WWIII. Thus they were forced to play nothing but defense. Mounting an offense effortwas off the table.
Furthermore, we see that is was a major geopolitical blunder that not ony drove Russia into the arms of China, it further endangered this nation.
By not listening to those of uswho were calling for an immediate end to this conflict before either side hasdd experienced serious losses, made it impossible to broker a peaceful solution that basically would allow Ukraine to remain whole, while providing Russia a face saving out with a promise of no frther NATO expansion along Russia's border.
Yet many here still want to play the blame game here, instead of realiing that they people calling for an end were the ones who were correct.
Bkmk
Ukraine’s a corrupt money laundering hellhole for Euroopean liberal ‘elites’. Russia’s a delusional country that puts their young in a meat grinder...
I don’t care about their problems anymore.
If they wake up to reality maybe Trump can help them find an exit out of hell. But if they want to stay in this insane choice forever or until both are broke and destroyed, that’s their choice and I don’t want to contribute to it.
No Exit is a choice.
Let the Europeans enter in if they want - their ‘elites’ have something to lose. Or not. Whatever. The ‘Biden’s - and their whore monger drug addicted sons’ would lose out if Ukraine became a part of Russia. Maybe they can join the Ukraine army and fight... LOL - kidding - the deadbeat young of ‘elites’ never fight or work...
If Trump wants to offer incentives for these two countriees to come to the ‘peace table’ fine... But this appears to be what both Ukraine and Russia want. Maybe new elections in both countries could move the needle - betting the people of both countries are sick of this crap - like the rest of us..
Because your bias prevents tyou from seeing what went on.
Russia isn’t.
We just elected a Muslim Jihadist the mayor of NY City. Maybe we should tend to our own country.
The Hill. Read it regularly?
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