Konstantin Kilimnik

(1:17-cr-201, District of Columbia)Third Superseding Indictment “A federal grand jury in the District of Columbia returned a third superseding indictment on June 8, 2018, against Konstantin Kilimnik, of Moscow, Russia. Kilimnik is charged with conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice. “Konstantin V. Kilimnik is a Russian political consultant. In the United States, he has become a person of interest in the 2017 Special Counsel investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 United States elections, particularly due to his ties with Paul Manafort, an American political consultant, who served as a campaign manager for Donald Trump.

Kilimnik was born in 1970 at Kriviy Rikh, Dnipropetrovsk, Ukraine, Soviet Union.[4] Fluent in Russian and Ukrainian before his service in the Soviet Army,[4] he became fluent in Swedish and English as a linguist[4] at the Military University of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation,[5][6] which trained interpreters for the Soviet Main Intelligence Directorate (GRU).[7] He served in the Soviet Army as a translator and worked closely with the Soviet Army’s GRU.[4] He took Russian citizenship after the dissolution of the Soviet Union.[7] In Moscow, Kilmnik then worked for the International Republican Institute (IRI) from 1995 to early 2005.[4][7] 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”.[4]He was dismissed after the Federal Security Service‘s chief gave a speech discussing internal private meetings at the Institute.[7]

Recruited by Philip M. Griffin as a translator for pro-Russia Ukrainian Rinat Akhmetov and seeking better pay than at IRI, Kilimnik met Paul Manafort in 2005 and became an employee of Manafort’s consulting firm.[4][8] After leaving IRI in April 2005, he lived and worked in Kiev and Moscow while his wife and two children remained in Moscow living in a modest house near the Sheremetyevo International Airport.[4] Some reports say Kilimnik ran the Kiev office of Manafort’s firm and was Manafort’s right-hand man in Kiev.[4] They began working for Viktor Yanukovych after the 2004 Orange Revolution cost him the Presidency. With help from Manafort and Kilimnik, the Russian backed Yanukovych became President in 2010. Kilimnik then spent 90% of his time inside the Presidential administration.[8] 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 devised a strategy to discredit Yulia Tymoshenko along with Hillary Clinton.[9] This effort supported the pro-Russia administration of then President of Ukraine Viktor Yanukovych.[9] Yanukovvych hired Paul 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.[10][11] When Yanukovych fled the country, Manafort and Kilimnik gained employment with the pro-Russia Ukrainian party Opposition Bloc which is backed by the same oligarchs who backed Yanukovych.[4] At some point Opposition Bloc stopped paying Manafort’s firm but even though the non-payment forced Manafort’s firm to shut down their Kiev office, Kilimnik continued to advise the party while working to collect unpaid fees for Manafort’s firm.[4]

Around 2010, Kilimnik collaborated with Rinat Akhmetshin when the Washington-based lobbyist was trying to sell a book disparaging one of Yanukovych’s opponents.[7]

In 2017 Kilimnik helped Manafort write an op-ed for a Kiev newspaper. A journalist in Ukraine, Oleg Voloshyn, has disputed this, stating that he and Manafort wrote the op-ed and that he e-mailed the rough draft to Kilimnik.[12] 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.[1]

In 2018, media reported Kilimnik to be variously “described as a fixer, translator or office manager to President Donald Trump’s ex-campaign chairman Paul Manafort.[13]”  Wikipedia

He Says He’s an Innocent Victim. Robert Mueller Says He’s a Spy. NY Times

Konstantin V. Kilimnik once worked for Paul Manafort’s political consulting and advising operation out of this storefront in Kiev, Ukraine. As befits a man labeled a Russian spy by the special counsel, Robert S. Mueller III, there are no photographs extant of Mr. Kilimnik. By Andrew E. Kramer April 6, 2018 ”

He worked for a time in Sweden as an interpreter for a Russian company that exported arms, and later in the Moscow office of the International Republican Institute, a Washington-based nonprofit, where former employees said they suspected he was informing on them to the Russian authorities.

He parted ways with the organization, a former employee of the Moscow office said, after the chief of the F.S.B., the successor agency to the K.G.B., talked in a speech about the private meetings of the institute’s officials. They didn’t have evidence, but suspected Mr. Kilimnik had been the source, said the former official, who could not be cited publicly discussing personnel issues. In the interview, Mr. Kilimnik said he had been dismissed for having taken work on the side as an interpreter for Mr. Manafort in Ukraine in the early 2000s.”