Telegraph: Trumpin virkamiehellä yhteyksiä Kremliin

Trump official who shut down Russia propaganda unit has links to Kremlin

Darren Beattie, who alarmed the State Department with his pro-Moscow views, is married to a woman whose uncle has ties to Putin

A senior official who dismantled the US governments Russian disinformation unit is married to a Russian woman with links to the Kremlin, The Telegraph can reveal.

Darren Beattie has provoked alarm within the State Department since being appointed in February for his ardent pro-Russian views and focus on destroying the agency tasked with tackling Kremlin propaganda.

Mr Beattie, the acting under-secretary for public diplomacy and public affairs, is married to a woman whose uncle has taken several roles in Russian politics and once received a personal thank you message from Vladimir Putin.

In the years before joining the government, Mr Beattie wrote social media posts suggesting Western institutions should be infiltrated by Putin, while he also attacked what he described as the globalist American empire.

In May 2021, public records show, he married a Russian woman called Yulia Kirillova in a ceremony in Broward County, Florida.

Ms Kirillova, who according to her Facebook page was educated in Moscow before studying abroad in Canada and Washington DC, is the niece of Sergei Chernikov, a Russian drinks magnate who part-owns a flat with her mother, Natalia.

Mr Chernikov, whose net worth was estimated to be $150 million in 2005, reportedly received a letter of thanks from Putin for his help in the election campaign which first brought the Russian leader to power.

Two months before Russias full-scale invasion of Ukraine, he said: Imagine the whining from the Globalist American Empire if Putin invades Ukraine I love it when our national security bureaucrats fail!

He has also praised Putin as brave and strong, and claimed the Russian leader had done more to advance conservative positions in the US than any Republican. He also declared: Nato is a much greater threat to American liberty than Putin ever was.

The funny thing is just about every Western institution would improve in quality if it were directly infiltrated and controlled by Putin, he wrote in September 2021.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/us/news/2025/06/03/trump-official-shut-russ…