Putin’s Useful Influencer – Michael Warren

“Today, I had an incredible opportunity to meet with Kiril Dmitriev, the special envoy to the president of Russia,” Luna said as the camera captured her and Dmitriev walking through corridors at a hotel in Miami Beach, sitting at a conference table, and speaking together to Russian state-owned media during their meeting.

“This meeting was incredible,” Luna went on in her voiceover. “We were able to discuss the meeting of both Congress and the Russian Duma, which is their version of the House of Representatives, as well as potential trade options in the future.”

Luna, who has consistently opposed American aid to Ukraine in its war with Russia, concluded her voiceover: “I hope and I pray for the peace between our nations, that we can all agree and move forward in building a legacy for generations to come.”

The only thing that appeared to be missing from Luna’s story was a disclosure that the post was sponsored by the Russian government. Though why would the Kremlin need to sponsor anything? Of her own volition, Luna is perhaps the most anti-Ukraine (or is it pro-Russian?) member of Congress, and it’s really not close.

There is her aforementioned opposition to aid to Ukraine, from her vote for an amendment to block the U.S. government from providing cluster munitions to the war-torn country in 2023 to her promise this year to continue voting against any funding for weapons. In 2023, she was among those who co-sponsored the “Ukraine Fatigue Resolution” in the House calling on the U.S. to “end its military and financial aid to Ukraine.”

But Luna has also been particularly friendly toward Russia. She has shared Russian propaganda, including claiming that the Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky “banned” the Orthodox Church. (The truth is complex. On claims of national security concerns, Zelensky has signed a law that requires Ukrainian Orthodox churches to disaffiliate with the Moscow Patriarchate and the Russian Orthodox Church, an illiberal move that does not affect other Orthodox churches in Ukraine. The Russian military, meanwhile, has killed lots of Ukrainian clergy and destroyed hundreds of houses of worship during its invasion of Ukraine.)

Earlier this month Luna echoed Donald Trump’s thanks to Putin after the strongman criticized the Nobel Committee for not awarding its peace prize to the American president. “Thank you @KremlinRussia_E for backing @POTUS !” she tweeted, followed by emojis of the American flag, a dove, and a Russian flag.

And last week, Luna announced (on X, where else?) that she had “received a hard copy of the report on JFK’s assassination from the Ambassador of Russia” and that a “team of experts is enroute to my office in the morning to begin translation and full review of documents.” Luna thanked the Russian embassy and later directed her followers to where the documents were posted online. Luna once again thanked the Russian ambassador to the U.S. for providing her with the documents, which she says “are believed to be authentic.”

Dmitriev himself replied to that tweet, posting on October 16, “Thank you congresswoman Luna for building bridges, bringing transparency and being a Peacemaker. Looking forward to seeing you soon.”

That was all the run-up to their mini-summit, which occurred during a brief trip to the United States in which Dmitriev also made multiple media appearances and met with the Trump administration’s own envoy, Steve Witkoff. (Incidentally, Trump’s treasury secretary, Scott Bessent, referred to Dmitriev as a “Russian propagandist” on CBS’s Face the Nation Sunday.)

Dmitriev had little to say about the content of his meeting with Witkoff, but he has actively shared how much he enjoyed talking with Luna. On his social media accounts, Dmitriev posted about his “very productive and constructive meeting with great @RepLuna.” The Russian envoy, who also heads the Russian sovereign wealth fund, posted photos of himself handing Luna a bouquet of flowers and presenting her with what looks like a book in Russian titled Great Words from a Great Man with a photograph of Putin on the cover.

“Thank you @kadmitriev!” Luna tweeted along with her own photo of the flower exchange.

Luna’s office did not respond to multiple questions from The Dispatch, including whether the State Department had known ahead of time about her meeting with Dmitriev. The State Department declined to comment. 

When it comes to useful idiots in American politics, Luna is hardly the first. 

Tulsi Gabbard, now the director of national intelligence in the Trump administration, said she met with Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad during a 2017 trip to that country while she was a Democratic House member, also saying she was “skeptical” Assad was behind a chemical weapons attack on his own people. Ten years earlier Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic speaker of the House, led a small bipartisan congressional delegation to meet with Assad despite opposition from the George W. Bush administration. 

And former California Republican Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, who once claimed to have lost a drunken arm-wrestling match with Putin years before he became Russia’s president, was so favorably disposed to Putin and the Kremlin that the FBI informed him in 2012 that the Russians were trying to recruit him as a spy.

But in the era of social media where, in politics as in anywhere else, attention is the coin of the realm, Luna is taking a uniquely active role in advertising her eagerness to engage with a government that the Trump administration continues to sanction for being unserious in the negotiations for peace with Ukraine. She has defended her meeting with Dmitriev against critics on social media, boasting of her willingness to dialogue for peace and castigating others for wanting perpetual war.

“It takes a real special type of dumbass if you think your elected officials should not be discussing peace and economic security with countries currently engaged in war,” she tweeted Monday morning.