The Hill's op-ed sent out the alarm today, warning that Kirill Dmitriev, CEO of Russia’s Direct Investment Fund and Special Envoy for Russian President Vladimir Putin, had tried to worm his way into U.S. President Donald Trump’s political base. What they failed to mention is that Dmitriev and his team, during their three days in Washington over Oct. 24-26, were meeting with Trump Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and his White House team. The two events cited, however, were Dmitriev’s meeting with Rep. Anna Paulina Luna (FL-R), where he reiterated his proposal for a “Trump-Putin” Bering Sea Tunnel, and his interview on Lara Logan’s podcast, in which he noted a common healthy strain in Putin and Trump, both emphasizing traditional family values.
The op-ed, entitled “Putin’s Troll Set Out To Dupe the American Right”, was co-authored by Mark Toth, a writer “on national security and foreign policy,” and Col. (ret.) Jonathan Sweet, who “served 30 years as a military intelligence officer and led the U.S. European Command Intelligence Engagement Division from 2012 to 2014.” But it was primarily based upon material from the founder of the Ukraine Freedom Project, Steven Moore.
In brief, it argued that, now that Putin has overplayed his hand in his unrealistic “maximalist” demands on Ukraine, and now that Tucker Carlson has been contained, Dmitriev comes to the U.S. to appeal to conservative values. “As Steven Moore, a former chief of staff on Capitol Hill and the founder of the Ukrainian Freedom Project [sic] 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.’”
It celebrated “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% by March 2025. Now, it has rebounded to 47% among Trump voters.... 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.” His making “false claims about Russian conservative and religious values is another.”
It then cited “a poll Moore commissioned” showing that “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% 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% of Russians, according to various sources.”
Otherwise, it maintains a juvenile tone, including praise for U.S. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent ostensibly pulling the rug out from under Dmitriev by calling him a Russian propagandist, and ridicule for Russia’s nuclear-powered Burevestnik missile, dismissing it as a “Wunderwaffen.” But there is genuine concern in Washington that Trump might bump into great infrastructure projects and grow into the job. To such people, Dmitriev has come to bear the mark of the devil.
