Putin’s man in Washington is usually far from view. Now he’s at the center of a storm that brought down a key Trump ally and threatens another

He has become a lightning rod for suspicions about Donald Trump’s ties with Russia, inadvertently bringing down one of the president’s closest allies and now threatening another.



Ambassador Sergey Kislyak, Vladimir Putin’s man in Washington, is usually far from view inside an imposing white marbled embassy on the third highest hill in the city – a location that prompted fears the Soviets would be able to intercept communications – but now finds himself in the spotlight.

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Kislyak’s conversations with the former national security adviser Michael Flynn led to Flynn being forced to quit on 13 February for giving a misleading account to the vice-president, Mike Pence, about his contacts with the ambassador. Kislyak’s two meetings with Jeff Sessions caused the attorney general on Thursday to recuse himself from investigations into whether Russia meddled in the US elections; Sessions is now facing calls to resign.

The second blow came just when Trump was on a high after a relatively well received first address to Congress, indicating that Russia is a cloud over his presidency that will only darken rather than dissipate.

“Kislyak was acting strategically to engage individuals the Russian government thought could be key allies in the incoming US administration,” said Alina Polyakova, deputy director of the Atlantic Council’s Dinu Patriciu Eurasia Center in Washington. “What is surprising is how successful they’ve been: Sessions is the second person after Flynn revealed to have had meetings they tried to cover up, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there are more to come.”

Kislyak, 66, trained as an engineer in Moscow, attended the Soviet Union’s Academy of Foreign Trade and joined the foreign ministry in 1977. His first spell as an envoy to the US was between 1985 and 1989, just as Mikhail Gorbachev was pursuing perestroika and glasnost. His focus was arms control.

Steven Pifer, a former US state department official who is now director of the arms control and non-proliferation initiative at the Brookings Institution, a thinktank in Washington, recalled: “He was working to enhance US-Soviet relations and trying to make progress on arms control. I did not detect, as I did with some Soviet diplomats, a visceral dislike of the US.

“He’s intelligent. He speaks very good English. He can show a sense of humour. At the same time, he can also represent his country even when he has a bad brief to represent, for example over the military intervention in Ukraine. He’s loyal to Russia. I imagine he’s had some interaction with Putin but didn’t come from his inner circle of intelligence and St Petersburg.”

Kislyak was ambassador to Nato from 1998, then a deputy foreign minister from 2003. In 2008, he was appointed ambassador to the US, not long before the election of Barack Obama. Last December, Obama ordered the expulsion of 35 of Kislyak’s colleagues.

In a rare press conference last year, Kislyak said: “We were able to end the cold war, but most probably we weren’t able to build post-cold war peace.”

Some US reports allege that Kislyak is a top recruiter for Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence agency, a claim that Moscow dismisses as American paranoia. Pifer, who was ambassador to Ukraine from 1998 to 2000, replied: “That strikes me as pretty odd. Everything I’ve seen, he’s been a Russian diplomat.”

But Polyakova disagreed: “It’s certainly possible. During the Soviet days the embassy was known to serve that function.”

She added: “As an envoy for the country he represents, Kislyak is very shrewd. From another perspective, he’s quite manipulative and nefarious in some ways.”

Those that have dealt with Kislyak, who is married with one adult daughter, say he is a soft-spoken man whose abundant charm gives way to firmness in defending Russia on American soil.

The Pentagon’s former chief Russia policy official, Evelyn Farkas, said she respected him as “active, informed and smart”.. When confronted on a policy dispute, Kislyak is a gentleman but “he won’t budge”.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sergey Kislyak (bottom center) waits to hear Donald Trump speak during a joint session of Congress this week. Photograph: Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images

Loquacious and quick with a story, Kislyak seeks to fit in the mould of long-serving Russian and Soviet envoys like Anatoly Dobrynin, who observed and helped shape Washington-Moscow relations for a quarter of a century.



Kislyak is said to keep one of the best chefs in Washington’s diplomatic community. He is quick to show pride in his Ukrainian heritage by offering guests and interlocutors pepper-infused vodka to wash down the modern Russian cuisine at the embassy. He has connected Russian ballet companies to the Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts and hosted concerts at the embassy.

Sessions, at his abruptly called press conference on Thursday, recalled telling Kislyak that he had gone to Russia with a church group in 1991. “He said he was not a believer himself but he was glad to have church people come there,” Sessions told reporters. “I thought he was pretty much of an old-style Soviet-type ambassador.”

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Kislyak was present at Trump’s address to a joint session of Congress on Tuesday. The president did not mention Russia once. But it did not take long for the issue to dog his administration once again.

Trump rose to power outside the traditional Washington political networks. As much as that endeared the businessman to his supporters, it made him an unknown quantity to a diplomatic community that cannot afford to be unfamiliar with a contender for the US presidency.

Sessions, however, had been a US senator for over 20 years. As the only senator to endorse Trump early in 2016, he represented a familiar channel for diplomats to learn more about a candidate pledging to overturn the traditional pro-western, anti-Russian tilts in US foreign affairs.

Typically, when foreign ambassadors meet with senators in solitary engagements, it is to discuss a parochial issue – a trade relationship with a business partner in a senator’s home state, for instance – or to make an introduction to a high-ranking foreign official. Sessions, in in his press conference, said he met with Kislyak in his Senate office with staffers present, and “somehow the subject of the Ukraine came up”.

Meeting Kislyak one-on-one, Farkas said, “tells me it’s likely because [Sessions was] advising Trump”. Such discussions are, “generally, considered a bit risky” by presidential campaigns, she continued, though not illegal.

Michael McFaul, US ambassador to Russia between 2012 and 2014, tweeted: “Let’s not be naive folks. Kislyak obviously was meeting Sessions because of his role in Trump world. That’s his job.”

Additional reporting by Alec Luhn in Moscow