Special Counsel Robert Mueller's latest indictment against Paul Manafort also charges Konstantin Kilimnik, his longtime Ukrainian protégé, with obstruction of justice and conspiracy to obstruct justice. While Kilimnik's name has come up several times over the course of the Russia investigation, he has remained somewhat of a mysterious figure.
Christopher Miller, as a reporter with Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, interviewed Kilimnik and described his appearance, but it has been impossible to find public photographs of the man who allegedly has ties to Russian military intelligence.
Now Miller, writing for VICE News, has published two images he says are of Kilimnik with his wife, taken from her social media.
Two photos of Kilimnik, a longtime aide to President Trump’s ex-campaign chief Paul Manafort, have surfaced on a publicly available Russian social media account apparently used years ago by Kilimnik’s wife. VICE News confirmed with three people who know Kilimnik that it's him in the pictures.
One of the pictures was first published Saturday by the Russian-language service of the BBC. The agency didn’t say that it had independently verified the picture’s authenticity.
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During an interview in Kiev last year, Kilimnik joked in front of this reporter that an acquaintance who casually snapped his photograph should keep it secret — or risk being killed by Russia’s military intelligence service, the GRU.
“Don't show that picture. If you show that picture, I will kill you, the KGB will kill you...the GRU will kill you as well,” he said.
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The photographs of Kilimnik were posted on the Russian social networking site Odnoklassniki, commonly known as OK.ru. They appear on a profile apparently set up by Kilimnik’s wife, Ekaterina.
Their authenticity was affirmed by three people who’ve met Kilimnik, including a longtime acquaintance of both Kilimnik and his wife, and by this reporter after in-person interviews with him in 2017. Kilimnik mentioned his wife during both meetings.
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One Western analyst who positively identified the photographs after years of regular contact with Kilimnik told VICE News he was certain the man he’d been speaking to was a Russian intelligence agent.
“I never had any doubts, it was so obvious for me,” the analyst said, adding that his only real question was whether Kilimnik was “a double agent” working for “Russia and the USA.”
Exclusive: First photos emerge of shadowy Manafort aide tied to Russian intelligence (Vice News)