By Filipp Lebedev, Gleb Stolyarov, Ryan McNeill, Mari Saito and Anastasiia Malenko, Reuters, 3/26/26
Blazing trains, burning tracks, black smoke.
Footage posted online by Ukrainian fighters documents their repeated sabotage attacks on a vast railroad system being built by Russia across the occupied territories of Ukraine. But their efforts are not nearly enough to hold back the tide of Moscow’s rapid industrial expansion.
The attacks on Russia’s supply chains have made scant impact, and tightening Russian control is snuffing out opposition efforts, said one Ukrainian fighter, Orest, using his military call-sign for security reasons as he operates behind enemy lines in the Donetsk region. “The railroad is hundreds of kilometres long,” he told Reuters. “We’re not all-powerful, unfortunately.”
According to the Kremlin, these occupied regions represent “Novorossiya”: New Russia. And it’s buzzing with activity.
Even as Moscow pursues a devastating war against Ukrainian forces to the west, it’s pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into an aggressive, years-long buildout of transport and trade infrastructure in the areas it has captured in the east and south, a Reuters investigation has found.
The spending spree, which dwarfs the development funds allocated to other Russian regions, facilitates the transport of troops and military equipment, as well as grain and mineral resources, the reporting shows. The construction projects also serve a longer-term goal of Moscow: weaving the seized territories into Russia, including the Donbas area whose fate lies at the heart of U.S.-backed talks to end the war.
A large-scale program of socio-economic development has been launched, essentially a program of reviving our ancestral, historical Russian lands.
Reuters reporting provides the first detailed picture of the transformation of Russian-held Ukraine taking place under the occupation. This examination draws on an analysis of thousands of satellite images, official Russian tender documents, public statements, export and freight data, as well as interviews with more than three dozen Ukrainian officials and former residents of the occupied areas.
When asked about Russia’s infrastructure buildup in the occupied territories, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy used Crimea as an example, saying Russian investments there are a “facade” that don’t benefit residents of the Ukrainian peninsula, which Moscow annexed in 2014. “It doesn’t look like some modern resort,” he said in an interview. “It’s all militarized.” Zelenskiy’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment on the full findings of the Reuters investigation.
A White House official said U.S. President Donald Trump is working very hard to end the war and wants to end the senseless killing.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told Reuters the four territories are an integral part of the Russian Federation and “subjects of Russia”, adding: “It is written in the constitution of the country.”
Work is well underway on the so-called Novorossiya Railways system, which includes a planned 525 km (326-mile) line started in 2023, the year after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. The route is to span the regions of Donetsk and Luhansk, which comprise the Donbas, and Zaporizhzhia and Kherson.
The Novorossiya Highway is, meanwhile, carving its way across those seized territories as part of a 1,400 km “Azov Ring” superhighway loop that will hook the regions up with Russia and strategically important Crimea.
Occupied Ukrainian ports that were largely inactive in the first years of the war have been revamped and reopened under Russia’s flag on the inland Sea of Azov, which connects to the Black Sea. Satellite images taken last August of the city of Mariupol in Donetsk show a new silver-domed facility about the length of a football pitch has sprung up on the docks during the Russian occupation. Also visible nearby is a mountain of what looks like coal being readied for export.
The satellite analysis, conducted by Reuters, used a machine-learning model to crawl through thousands of optical and radar images to identify major construction. It found that more than 2,500 km of railroads, highways and roads have been newly built, repaired or upgraded between 2022 and 2025 across the four occupied territories and the nearby Russian areas they have been connected up to.
The scale of investment and long-term nature of the infrastructure projects shows the Kremlin has no intention of returning the territories to Ukraine as part of any future peace settlement, according to Karolina Hird, a national security fellow at the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War.
“The way Russia’s investing very heavily in industry and the economy in occupied Ukraine, so it can reap profits off of the occupation, also financially entangles Ukraine into Russia,” she said.
That’s bleak news for Ukraine and its European allies. They have insisted that Moscow return the captured land and have roundly rejected U.S. calls for Kyiv to cede control of the whole of the Donbas as part of any deal to end the four-year-old conflict.
Moscow has also put dozens of prized commodity assets in the occupied areas up for sale, Russian state auction documents show. These include mines and agricultural land – such as the rights to develop one of Ukraine’s biggest gold deposits, which were snapped up by a Russian mining company in April 2025.
The Russian transport ministry and Novorossiya Railways, a Russian state enterprise created in 2023 to oversee rail construction and maintenance in the occupied territories, didn’t respond to queries about the progress of the infrastructure projects.
Moscow makes no secret of what it views as its historical claim to eastern and southeastern Ukraine or its ambitions to recombine the regions with what it deems the motherland. And President Vladimir Putin has grand plans for “Novorossiya” – a term from Russia’s tsarist imperial past that modern nationalists use to describe the territories.
Russia has allocated about $11.8 billion of federal cash to develop the four occupied territories in Ukraine between 2024 and 2026 as part of a program for priority national development projects, according to a Reuters analysis of government data published online. That is almost three times as much as the combined money allocated to about 20 other federal regions targeted for such projects, the data shows.
Putin outlined his vision for the territories in a public address on September 30 to celebrate the third anniversary of their “reunification” with Russia. The regions had suffered from the ravages of war and decades of neglect, the president said, and Russia had laid 6,350 km of roads there over the last three years.
“A large-scale program of socio-economic development has been launched, essentially a program of reviving our ancestral, historical Russian lands,” Putin declared.
Moscow currently controls about a fifth of Ukraine, including the bulk of four regions: Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kherson. And it has formally claimed, opens new tab the entirety of all four as part of Russia.
Russia’s move to annex the territories has been condemned by Ukraine and its Western allies as an illegal land grab.
The new road and rail connections being built already allow vehicles and trains moving people and goods in and out of Ukraine to circumvent the Crimean Bridge, according to local and Moscow authorities. The bridge had previously been Russia’s only road and rail link to Crimea, enabling the transport of troops, fuel and equipment to Ukraine via the peninsula. It has proved a chokepoint for Russian military and trade flows, with repeated Ukrainian strikes causing delays and disruption.
Vadym Skibitskyi, deputy chief of Ukraine’s HUR military intelligence agency, which has been monitoring the enemy activity, said the Russian focus was on building out supply chains to support their war effort.
“The most critical consideration for the Russians is infrastructure. It is the transport infrastructure,” he added.
SATELLITE IMAGERY REVEALS NEW RAILWAY
Since 2023, Russia has spent about $425 million on the construction and maintenance of the railway network in the occupied territories, according to statements posted online by Novorossiya Railways and the Russian rail watchdog in August last year.
The centrepiece project is the main line to connect southern Russia to Crimea via the occupied territories, according to the official media outlet of the Russian government. It didn’t specify the planned full cost.
Satellite imagery taken between July 2023 and November 2025 shows the gradual process of a section of the line being newly laid, a 60-km connection between the towns of Novoselivka and Kolosky in Donetsk region, north of Mariupol.
A Ukrainian intelligence official who monitors Russian activity said this connection is an example of how Russia is building new rail links further from the front line, at a safer distance from possible Ukrainian strikes, to safely deliver ammunition and military vehicles to its troops. Reuters couldn’t determine if the line is in operation.
The Russian roads program is also soaking up hundreds of millions of dollars, led by the Novorossiya Highway project, state tender documents show.
A total of 20 tenders related to the building of the highway, worth more than $214 million, have been awarded to contractors, according to Russia’s state procurement website. The projects range in scope from engineering surveys to bridge maintenance. The Russian transport ministry said late last year that an extra $123 million would be spent on the road in 2026.
UKRAINE OFFICIAL: IT’S LIKE CRIMEA BUT FASTER
The route is a mix of new and upgraded roads to connect stretches of existing highway. It will run for 630 km once finished, according to Russia’s federal road agency and transport ministry. They haven’t given a planned completion date.
The construction and repair of bridges and interchanges, the widening of roads, and even the clearing of brush along roads are visible from satellite imagery.
Road crews have completed most of a 100 km section between Taganrog in southwestern Russia and near Manhush in occupied Donetsk, according to the Reuters analysis. Russia is also constructing a major new bypass road around Mariupol, which was largely levelled by fighting early in the war, the analysis shows.
The Novorossiya Highway forms the occupied territories’ leg of the giant Azov Ring. Russian officials say they plan to complete that highway in 2030, linking Russia’s Rostov-on-Don to Mariupol in Donetsk and cities in Zaporizhzhia and Crimea.
Olha Kuryshko is Ukraine’s presidential representative for Crimea, tasked with monitoring the rights of Ukrainians living there. Kuryshko said Russia’s drive to roll out economic infrastructure in eastern and southern Ukraine was similar to what it did in annexed Crimea – except this time it’s happening much faster.
After Moscow seized Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, it embarked on a series of ambitious projects there including the Crimean Bridge, a monumental 19-km road and rail span, as well as a new highway and two power stations to provide stable electricity to the peninsula after the annexation, when the region was cut off from Ukraine’s energy supply.
“The Russians have accomplished as much in three years of occupation of the new territories as they have in 10 years in Crimea, according to our analysis,” said Kuryshko. “They’ve carried it out so rapidly, spent so much money, taken everything up a notch from what they did in Crimea,” she added. “Crimea was their training ground.”
KREMLIN COMMANDEERS UKRAINE’S PORTS
Russia has also moved to harness Ukraine’s occupied ports on the Sea of Azov, a shallow inland sea bounded by Russia and Ukraine that connects to the Black Sea via the Kerch Strait. The Sea of Azov has been a major trade route for centuries.
In August, Moscow added Mariupol and Berdiansk on the Azov sea to a public list of Russian ports open to international vessels, a move denounced by Kyiv. Both hubs are being dredged and the canals leading to them deepened and widened to allow larger ships to navigate them once again. Those projects are among construction tenders for the two ports worth more than $13 million that have been posted on the Russian state procurement website since 2023.
Two veteran dock workers at Mariupol, who spoke on condition of anonymity, told Reuters the port has become significantly busier in recent months. Vessels are coming and going loaded with grain and coal, they said, while adding that activity remains below pre-war levels.
Between July and November last year, 18 cargo vessels operated by Russian and foreign companies have been recorded departing from Mariupol and Berdiansk ports, with most bound for ports in Turkey, according to an analysis of LSEG vessel-tracking data. Reuters couldn’t determine what was transported by the vessels. Turkish authorities did not respond to a request for comment on the journeys.
In 2024, no vessels entered or exited the two ports, according to LSEG data.
The Russians are extracting valuable natural resources from the occupied territories.
Russian customs data, provided by a commercial trade data provider, shows that between March 2022 and March 2025, at least 508,500 metric tons of coal, coke and anthracite worth $13.2 million were exported from the occupied regions. The main buyers of Ukrainian coal during that period were trading companies from Turkey and the United Arab Emirates, according to the data. The commodity was also shipped to companies in India, Indonesia, Egypt and Algeria.
Indonesia’s foreign ministry said the country’s trade relations are conducted through transparent mechanisms and that it imports coal from several countries, including Russia, Australia and China. None of the other destination countries responded to requests for comment.
GOLD MINE IN EASTERN UKRAINE
Moscow has also been expanding Russian control over the seized Ukrainian territories’ natural resources via state auctions.
Dozens of assets, ranging from mines to quarries and farm land, are being placed on the block in online state auctions, according to public auction documents reviewed by Reuters. Among assets sold so far are the rights to extract sandstone, crushed stone, granite and chalk from four mines in the Luhansk region.
One of the biggest sales to date has been the rights to develop the Bobrykivske gold mine in Luhansk. It was snapped up for $9.7 million by Alchevskpromgroup, which is controlled by Russian mining company Polyanka, according to documents of the sale. Polyanka mostly develops mines in the far east of Russia.
Bobrykivske’s reserves contain about 1.64 tons of gold, which would be worth almost $260 million based on current spot prices, according to the auction documents.
Australian mining company Korab Resources had previously been developing the site. But Korab halted its work in 2014 when the area was seized by Russian-backed separatists, making it impossible for the company to access the region, which came under Western sanctions, and it wrote off the value of the project, according to Executive Chairman Andrej Karpinski and publicly available Ukrainian corporate records.
A satellite image taken of the deposit in September showed what appeared to be tire tracks all around the site. When asked by Reuters to compare the image with shots taken in June 2024, Karpinski told Reuters that work had already begun at the site. He pointed out what appeared to be an excavator in the main pit and shipping containers set up at the foot of a stockpile of rocks extracted from the mine.
UKRAINE-CRISIS/RUSSIAN-INFRASTRUCTURE
Alchevskpromgroup, Polyanka and the Russian mineral resources ministry didn’t respond to questions related to Bobrykivske’s sale and whether work had started on the site.
Hird, at the Institute for the Study of War, said there are significant costs to occupying such a large amount of territory. Russia’s ability to harness the natural and industrial resources of the regions could prove important for its finances, which have been severely strained by the war effort and international sanctions, she added.
“That can start tipping the scale to the point where the occupation actually becomes profitable to Russia,” Hird said.
What if Trump’s apparently chaotic thought processes and intuitive decision making are all a blind, a charade? What if we are really witnessing, in the Middle East and more widely, a carefully constructed plan with very definite objectives? Has Trump in fact “planned each charted course, each careful step along the byway”, while flinging the chaff of apparent chaos? I realise that this is not intuitive, but bear with me…
What kicked off my thinking was the revelation by Lockheed Martin that they had been instructed by Trump, months in advance of the attack on Iran, to massively increase production of interceptor missiles, with a short term goal of quadrupling capacity of THAAD. In January, before the start of the current conflict, Fox News was already reporting on various deals, including a trebling of PAC3 MSE interceptor deliveries, having been finalised between Lockheed and the Department of War.
Screencap from X
While obviously there are supply chain and production line constraints on the ability to ramp up production within months, the urgency of this activity—almost entirely focused on interceptor missiles—that started in 2025 is in hindsight a clear indication that early war with Iran was expected. It is plain evidence of premeditation.
The second thing that triggered my thought that this is all carefully planned, is the nature of the breakdown of the nuclear deal talks. It appears there was a broad consensus that Iran offered concessions which made a deal very practical, in particular giving up its stocks of enriched uranium into trust (a proposal Iran had historically rejected when Putin offered to hold the material). Both the hosts, Oman and the British thought a deal was there.
The failure of the talks is being spun as due to the incompetence and lack of technical knowledge of Witkoff and Kushner. But I just don’t buy this. The sending of unqualified negotiators was part of a ploy to use the negotiations as cover for an attack—the second time in a year that the United States had pulled the same trick.
They didn’t need competent negotiators, because they had never intended a good faith negotiation.
The attack on Iran was always planned by Trump. He was not “bounced into it” by Israel. It had been in gestation for months. That fact had been held within a very tight circle to avoid both political opposition and institutional opposition from the US military and intelligence community.
January’s protests in Iran found ordinary people genuinely ready to protest, motivated by economic hardship caused by sanctions. But they were guided and abused by Mossad and CIA agents among the Iranian people, who committed and encouraged violence and initiated pro-Shah chanting.
There was never the slightest possibility the protests would bring regime change, but that was not the intention. The purpose was to incite an over-reaction by the Iranian government that could “justify” the planned attack on Iran. The dead protestors have been great martyrs for Trump’s—and Israel’s—wider cause.
The planting by Western state-sponsored individuals and organisations of ludicrous claims throughout Western state and corporate media of thirty to forty thousand killed, was a deliberate and considered plan to reduce domestic opposition in the West to the forthcoming war against Iran.
Now factor in another apparently random act by Trump—the astonishing kidnapping of President Maduro of Venezuela on 3 January, a month before the attack on Iran.
Trump’s naval blockade of Venezuela’s oil has secured a US monopoly of its sale and distribution. As with Iraq, only US-approved contractors can buy the oil and payments are made to a Trump-controlled account in Qatar, from which revenue is given to the Venezuelan government entirely at Trump’s discretion.
This audacious imperialist grab of the world’s largest oil reserve further insulated the USA against the effects of the forthcoming closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
Again, the narrative is being spun that Trump did not foresee the closure of the Strait by Iran. That is plainly a nonsense—every commentary on a potential Iran war for half a century has focused on the Strait of Hormuz. The only possible explanation is that Trump does not mind the closure.
While, as Trump says, the United States does not need the oil that comes through the Strait, the apparent weakness in his case is that higher oil prices are universal and hit Trump’s support, particularly as Americans fill their Gas tanks. But to concentrate on this is to make the fundamental error of imagining that Trump cares about what is good for the American people. He does not. He cares about what is good for Donald J. Trump and his immediate circle.
Here is the Chevron share price over the last month:
And here is Lockheed Martin. Note that the start of the 40% leap in share price coincides with those instructions last year on massively ramping up interceptor production.
Not to mention, of course, that the really big fortunes will have been made in oil and derivative commodity futures by those who knew this war was coming (acting through proxies).
The $200 billion Trump is requesting from Congress to continue the war is going to make an awful lot of well-connected people even richer.
So the plan is the making of fortunes, the strengthening of the military-industrial complex and the ratcheting up under cover of national cohesion in war of the authoritarianism that has reduced freedom of speech and outlawed dissent against Israel across the Western world.
To benefit Israel is the other predominant motive.
Trump’s thrashing about to articulate objectives for the war in Iran is performative, a blind to cover his true and steadfast objective—simply the annihilation of Iran as a functioning state, the infliction of the maximum amount of death and infrastructural damage, the reduction of Iran to the condition of Libya.
It goes without saying that the seizure of control of Iran’s hydrocarbons by the US is the ultimate endgame of this destruction, exactly as in Libya and in Iraq. But a linked and crucial objective is the elimination of the source of the only physical resistance to the expansion of Israel. Iran and its allies in Yemen and Lebanon have been the sole support of the Palestinians for years.
The colonial settler state of Israel is central to the projection of imperialist power in the Middle East. Its expansion is an essential part of the plan.
Destruction of Iran on the scale envisaged will take years of hard pounding. Again, it is planned—you don’t ask Congress for an instalment of $200 billion for a war you plan to wrap up in a month. Again, Trump’s taunts about having already won, objectives being achieved and about possibly finishing soon, are all just smoke and mirrors. The scale and horror of what is planned for Iran has to be obfuscated to limit a public revulsion that would be echoed in parts of the state apparatus.
Netanyahu yesterday revealed an interesting part of the endgame—construction of an oil pipeline that brings Iran’s oil out to be shipped from a Mediterranean terminal in Israel. That is a breathtakingly audacious plan, but absolutely aligns with Netanyahu’s and Trump’s actions.
Screen cap of Reuters article , 19 March 2026.
Which brings us to the Greater Israel side of the project. Israel is not going to put any of its ships or soldiers in harm’s way in Iran—that is the American contribution. But while the world is primarily watching Iran, Israel is starting a large-scale invasion of Lebanon with the aim of annexing all of Southern Lebanon permanently, even beyond the Litani River and including the cities of Tyre and Nabatieh, both currently under Israeli evacuation orders.
This land of course adjoins the annexed Golan Heights and the much larger area of Southern Syria that Israel has annexed in the past year with the acquiescence of Zionist puppet “President” al Jolani.
It is essential not to lose sight of the bipartisan nature of the United States’ long term plan. In a very real sense Trump is continuing—if greatly accelerating—the policy under Biden, who protected and enabled the Genocide in Gaza. The success of this US policy is phenomenal. Just consider that only 18 months ago the Zionist “Presidents” al-Jolani of Syria and Aoun of Lebanon were not in power. Both were brought to power as a result of US-aligned military action, by Israel against Hezbollah and by the CIA- and MI6-sponsored HTS forces. Put in place by Biden, they are now central to Trump’s strategy.
Aoun and al-Jolani are now united in threatening Hezbollah in the rear as it fights a desperate action against the Israeli invasion of Lebanon.
Meanwhile Israel officially occupies over 60% of the Gaza Strip—under cover of Trump’s “Board of Peace”, and continues to murder, blockade and starve the inhabitants of the remnant, while the de facto expansion of Israel into the West Bank and the levels of settler violence are escalating to levels of the utmost barbarity.
Iranian resistance is noble and Iran’s resilience has surprised many. It will be able to make any ground invasion, or even limited incursion, extremely costly for the United States. But as in Gaza or Lebanon, if the US and Israel are content simply to pound from the air for years with devastating force, and with no concern whatsoever for civilian casualties, ultimately all Iran can do is hang on and try to survive.
Given another year of destruction at the current levels of intensity, I do not believe that Iran would effectively be sending many missiles and drones back in self-defence. In a week or two we will hit the period of maximum Iranian effectiveness, where depletion of US-supplied interceptor missiles coincides with Iran retaining significant strike power. Israel’s fragile civilian morale will then be tested severely for a few weeks.
Iran’s capacity to defend against massive, years-sustained aerial bombardment is limited. We should not blind ourselves to that fact out of current joy at the Americans and Israelis getting a bloody nose.
It is comforting to see Trump as a buffoon, to accept the facade he presents of a blustering and ill-educated ignoramus, who swings wildly between policy options, and who does not understand the world of geopolitics.
But that is nonsense.
I have no hesitation in characterising Trump’s genius as evil, focused on personal gain and willing to inflict any amount of death, maiming and deprivation on innocent civilians to attain his goals. But he is indeed attaining his goals on the world stage.
Trump has forced the Security Council to underwrite his Board of Peace. This was a quite astonishing diplomatic triumph over a helpless Russia and China, both of which decided that other negotiations with Trump were more important. Trump has presided over Israel expanding on the ground by the day. Trump has taken Venezuela’s oil, the largest reserves in the world. Trump is currently killing people of Iran and destroying their infrastructure, while feigning indecision.
Despite U.S. President Donald Trump’s frequent statements that victory in Iran is close, there is no end in sight to the hostilities in the Persian Gulf. On the contrary, new approaches to limited traffic through the Strait of Hormuz are gradually being implemented. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps has started issuing paid transit permits to vessels unaligned with the United States or Israel, and a growing number of countries want to discuss “safe passage of their vessels.”
The consequences of restricted transit for the oil market are already clear and well known. Not as much attention is being paid to the impact on the global fertilizer market. The changes there will be more gradual, but irreversible. Food prices will take six to nine months to react to the supply shock in the fertilizer market resulting from the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Meanwhile, Russia might enjoy more lasting benefits than temporarily lining its pockets with petrodollars.
The Strait of Hormuz is the most important transit route not just for oil but also for fertilizers. Persian Gulf countries account for about 46 percent of global seaborne urea transit and around 30 percent of ammonia transit. These nitrogen compounds are integral for efficient cultivation of almost every food crop. However, their shipping from the Persian Gulf is almost completely paralyzed.
Disruptions to maritime transit through the strait have already triggered a sharp surge in nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer prices. According to Platts, as of March 19, the free on board (FOB) price for Middle East granular urea rose to $604–710 per ton, up from $436–494 before the start of the war. The Southeast Asia granular urea was at $750 per ton on March 19, up from $490–498 in late February. While these prices are still below the 2022 record highs, they continue to grow.
Furthermore, unlike with oil, there are no strategic reserves of urea, no alternate pipelines for ammonia, and no military escort programs. Saudi Arabia has created infrastructure to export oil bypassing the Strait of Hormuz, but no such solutions exist for fertilizers.
The lag between disruptions in fertilizer supply and rising food prices is measured in seasons rather than days. A farmer who doesn’t have access to urea at the start of the planting season might use less fertilizer, switch to a different crop, or forgo planting altogether. This decision affects the harvest in three to six months, and takes longer still to impact supermarket prices. Today we are at the very beginning of this cycle.
The UN World Food Program estimates that the number of people experiencing acute food insecurity could rise by 45 million to a record-high 363 million if the war in Iran doesn’t end by mid-2026, and oil prices remain above $100 a barrel.
The geographic distribution of this increase is predictable and politically significant: an additional 17.7 million people in East and Southern Africa, 10.4 million in West and Central Africa, and 9.1 million in Asia. Many in these regions will be happy to buy not just Russian fertilizers, but also the Kremlin’s narrative that Moscow is the best guarantor of food security for the Global South.
Similar dynamics played out in 2022, when Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine had also hit the fertilizer market hard. However, back then, the disruptions in Black Sea shipping had simultaneously driven up grain prices, which partially offset the rising cost of fertilizers for farmers.
Today, the grain prices are only growing a little, because Iran is not a major agricultural producer. Thus, higher expenses for farmers at the start of the planting season aren’t being compensated with higher crop values, and the consequences for the food market will emerge later and last longer.
As with the oil market, Russia is one of the main beneficiaries of the turmoil in the fertilizer market. Russia accounts for about 23 percent of global ammonia exports, 14 percent of global urea exports, and—together with Belarus—40 percent of global potash exports. Furthermore, its export infrastructure is completely independent of the Strait of Hormuz. Moscow doesn’t need a ceasefire, a military escort, or a diplomatic breakthrough to ramp up its deliveries. All it needs is orders, and it is getting more and more of these.
Importers in Nigeria and Ghana are already pre-purchasing Russian fertilizers for the third quarter of 2026. This is a rational market response to the disappearance of competing supply, and once established, these connections will solidify into a dependency that could outlast any ceasefire.
Moscow has already employed this tactic. In 2022–2023, the Kremlin used the Black Sea Grain Initiative as diplomatic leverage in Africa and the Middle East, pushing importer countries for friendlier positions and corresponding votes in the UN as an unofficial precondition for resuming deliveries.
Fertilizers are even more convenient as leverage. They receive less media attention in the West than wheat, and they are more critical for the agricultural sector. The bureaucrats responsible for fertilizer procurement in Ethiopia and Bangladesh don’t think about the Ukraine conflict when they need urea before the monsoon season arrives. They call the Kremlin, and the Kremlin answers.
Moscow is well aware of these new opportunities. In a March 18 interview with Kommersant, presidential aide Nikolai Patrushev said that the U.S. war with Iran is not a temporary crisis, but a structural realignment that should be leveraged. According to Patrushev, the U.S.-Israeli operation is a “catalyst for the redistribution of the global energy market and the disruption of maritime logistics” and has “unpredictable humanitarian and economic consequences.”
Patrushev made no mention of Ukraine in the interview. However, he did propose providing naval convoys to protect merchant ships. In August 2024, Patrushev was appointed chairman of the newly established Russian Maritime Board. Meanwhile, his son Dmitry Patrushev is a deputy prime minister for agriculture and fertilizer production.
The closure of the Strait of Hormuz triggers a chain reaction of three consecutive shocks in the agricultural sector. The first—a surge in fertilizer prices—is already under way. Even farmers in developed nations are feeling it, albeit less acutely due to existing stockpiles and access to financing.
The second—reduced crop yields as a result of high fertilizer prices—will come in the fall. Its impact will be uneven: agricultural producers in the United States and the EU will find it easier to diversify their suppliers than those in many countries of Africa and Asia.
The third—food inflation—will follow in 2027. Food is a commodity with a very low price elasticity of demand, particularly in poorer nations. A supply shock translates almost entirely into higher prices rather than lower consumption, and lower consumption is itself a catastrophe: in poorer nations, lower consumption means famine and not just changes in the composition of the consumer basket.
For Russia, each of these three shocks is important in its own way. Moscow imposed export quotas on fertilizers back in 2025 in order to stabilize the domestic market. A rapid increase in exports would require corresponding government decisions and could run up against infrastructure constraints at the ports.
Historically, Russia was the world’s largest exporter of anhydrous ammonia; however, the Togliatti–Odesa ammonia pipeline is not currently operating due to the war in Ukraine. A new terminal on the Taman Peninsula was supposed to partially resolve this issue, but the details on its full capacity remain unclear. Nevertheless, the Kremlin has already declared that “Russia is one of the few countries that can ensure a growing market supply.”
In the long run, the Kremlin will enjoy geopolitical gains from the turmoil in the Persian Gulf and not just financial benefits. Additional oil revenues are likely, but could run out. Meanwhile, higher prices on fertilizers and food are a victory of a different magnitude. Russia won’t just profit from rising prices; it will have the opportunity to convert its market power into political influence and acquire leverage over countries whose neutrality is vital for the West.
The war in Iran will probably end before most people see its connection with the rise in food prices in 2027. By that point, Russia will be able to position itself as an indispensable supplier that saved the world from starvation. The Kremlin did not sow this harvest, but it will most likely reap it.
The survey has been conducted since 2021 among the same group of respondents—more than 700 sole proprietors and small business owners. The most recent wave of interviews took place from January 20 to February 19, 2026.
According to the study, entrepreneurs’ expectations for the first quarter of 2026 are the worst ever recorded. More than half of respondents (52%) believe their business’s situation will worsen, while only 12% expect an improvement.
For comparison, in the first quarter of 2022, against the backdrop of the widespread introduction of anti-Russian sanctions, the share of pessimistic assessments was 38%, while optimistic ones were at least 20%.
At the same time, the share of companies operating in survival mode is growing. At the end of the fourth quarter of last year, it reached 39%, the highest level in the last five years. However, only 8% of entrepreneurs expect an increase in these indicators.
Small businesses’ financial performance is also deteriorating. Thirty-nine percent of respondents reported a decrease in revenue compared to the previous quarter, and 29% reported insufficient revenue to cover direct expenses.
Last week, the New York Times ran an alarming house editorial called “Politicians Are Trying To Control The News,” outlining how the “shadow of press repression” is now expanding to “onetime bastions of press freedom” like Hong Kong, Israel, and Donald Trump’s United States. Written in the grave tone the paper brought when it published a history-altering essay by Soviet dissident Andrei Sakharov fifty years ago, it was all true, except it left out our country’s strangest and most shameful example, one in which the Times played a regrettable part: the case of Dimitri Simes.
In August, 2024, the FBI raided the Virginia home of Simes, who defected to the United States in 1973 after being expelled for protesting Soviet involvement in the Vietnam War. A huge team of agents swooped into the empty home — both Simes and his wife were away — and took almost everything, including an icon “which my mother got from Andrei Sakharov.” For Simes and his wife Anastasia, it was devastating. “Look, I lived in the United States for fifty years,” he said Monday. “It was all our possessions.”
The FBI left one thing. “My handgun,” Simes said. “They put it on my night table.”
A month later, on September 5, 2024, Simes was indicted on a series of charges that have no precedent. Technically, he was charged with violating the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (“IEEPA”), a sanctions regime that allows the president to take action against any “unusual and extraordinary threat” to national security. The law is intended to allow the U.S. to seize or block assets of foreign powers deemed hostile or belligerent, in this case Russia.
The offense that triggered the Simes indictment was that he “continued … hosting and producing the television program ‘The Great Game’ for Channel One Russia, and received compensation and services from Channel One.” Simply put, he hosted a Russian TV program and was paid to do so. U.S. government sources told the New York Timescharges were filed “to crack down on Russia’s attempts to influence American politics ahead of November’s presidential election.” Times reporters Julian Barnes and Steven Lee Myers added that the Justice Department believed that Russian President Vladimir Putin had “devised a plan to target swing state voters in favor of Mr. Trump and against further support for Ukraine.”
The Great Game is a political debate show broadcast on Russia’s Channel One in Russian, for Russians. No one in America watches it, in swing states or anywhere else, but even if they did, it’s still extraordinary that the Biden government charged an American citizen in criminal court with the overtly political offense of potentially supporting his opponent, or opposing American involvement in the Ukraine war. Anyone reading that September, 2024 New York Times story would assume that Donald Trump by now would have handed Ukraine to Putin, and certainly dropped the charges against Simes.
Neither proved true. Simes remains under indictment, threatened with forty years in prison, for the crime of hosting a Russian TV show. It’s not a partisan problem, as this case (like the Assange case) was brought under Democrats and continues to be prosecuted under Donald Trump. Hundreds if not thousands of people in America work for foreign news organizations, some of them for sanctioned countries, but Simes alone has been criminally charged in this way. Why?
One of the lawyers for Simes is the eminent Michel Paradis, well known for representing Guantanamo detainees and for authoring a number of provocative books, including most recently The Light of Battle, about Dwight Eisenhower’s role in building America’s superpower status. I asked Paradis if there was any precedent for criminally charging someone for working as a journalist. Typically in speech offenses the ostensible offense is different: incitement, discrimination, causing harm, etc. With Simes, it was his employment status alone.
“It is a totally unprecedented use of the sanctions laws,” said Paradis. “The closest analogies over the past 100 years are the prosecutions of John W. Powell for sedition for editing China MonthlyReview during the Red Scare (which ended in a mistrial), and of Tokyo Rose for treason during World War II.”
Simes was pursued relentlessly in the Trump/Russia investigation, but the government never found wrongdoing. The biggest revelation about him in the Mueller report, in fact, disproved two media myths. After Trump was elected in 2016, Alfa Bank Petr Aven attempted to set up a line of communication with the new president by reaching out to former U.S. Ambassador to Germany Richard Burt, who in turn tried to broker a connection to team Trump through Simes.
Simes refused, in an episode that showed that pre-election hysterics about a “secret server” connection between Trump and Alfa-Bank were wrong. Moreover, as the Washington Post put it, “Russians did not appear to have pre-election contacts” with the Trump team.
Simes, long known as the head of the Center for the National Interest think tank, was for decades a go-to quote for journalists from papers like the New York Times and Washington Post, if they needed an insight into Soviet or Russian politics. As a young reporter at the Moscow Times I probably called him a half-dozen times, along with most other staffers. Now the onetime defector is back in exile in Russia, and the American press that asked for favors repeatedly has abandoned him as a politically inconvenient colleague.
Simes is comfortable in Moscow now, but is fighting his case not just for the right to return to his adopted country, but for the sake of the First Amendment and the rule of law itself. “If I were to remain silent, there would be a false impression that things like this are okay, that you can do it with total impunity,” he says. “That’s wrong.”
The rest of my conversation with Dimitri Simes, with whom I spoke for the first time in three decades Monday, is in an audio file below, followed by a transcript:
Matt Taibbi: Dimitri, thank you for joining me. I’m in New Jersey. Where are you right now?
Dimitri Simes: I am in Moscow.
Matt Taibbi: But you are an American citizen?
Dimitri Simes: Yes, but I’m also a Russian citizen.
Matt Taibbi: Can you just share a little bit of your history?
Dimitri Simes: Well, let me say first, I was not a Russian citizen for a very long time. I became a Russian citizen in October 2022, when I moved to Moscow full-time. Before that, since 1980, I was strictly a proud American citizen. I came to the United States with my first wife, in 1973. And we lived, at first in Virginia. Several months after we came to the Washington area, I got a job at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, where I was at first a senior fellow, then became director of Soviet Policy Studies.
I was there until 1980, then moved to the then-created, Foreign Policy Institute, and I also was there for about 10 years, as a research professor of Soviet Studies. And in 1983, I went to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, where I was until 1994. In 1994 Richard Nixon asked me to become CEO of his newly created center, so that’s basically my employment history.
Matt Taibbi: And that became the Center for the National Interest?
Dimitri Simes: That became the Center for the National Interest.
Matt Taibbi: One of the ironies of this whole story is that you were one of the most quoted people in the American press, whenever reporters wanted some insight into either Soviet or Russian politics. Is it fair to say you were very frequently called?
Dimitri Simes: I think so. I was frequently quoted. I also had dozens of articles in the New York Times, Washington Post. I certainly cannot complain about being able to share my views.
Matt Taibbi: What is The Great Game, and when did you begin hosting it?
Simes on “The Great Game,” a.k.a. “Большая Игра”
Dimitri Simes: It was in 2018. I was invited by Channel One to become one of two hosts. Initially, they envisioned it as a debate between Russian and American states.
And, on the Russian side, they selected Vyacheslav Nikonov, who is a prominent deputy in the State Duma, and [Soviet statesman Vyacheslav] Molotov’s grandson. As the first channel put it on the channel website, Vyacheslav, he was presenting the Russian position. I said at the outset that I could not present anybody’s position but my own, so it was stated delicately that I was explaining in American position.
Matt Taibbi: But you were there, essentially, to explain what you thought the American position or the Western position might be in the debates.
Dimitri Simes: That is correct, when we originally talked about the program, I shared it, obviously, with the center leadership. And they came to a conclusion, only Chairman Henry Kissinger and then Chairman General Boyd, they came to a conclusion, that, they did not want it to be just my own project.
And, the board voted, and they made it, an official initiative. And I volunteered that I would considerably cut my salary at the center to make sure that it would not look like, you know, I was enriching myself from that endeavor.
Matt Taibbi: Just to back up a moment, so that was in 2018. You were a supporter of Donald Trump in 2016, is that right? Can you explain why that was the case?
Dimitri Simes: Well, first, let me say, I was clearly supportive of his approach. I did not vote for him. I did not vote for a very simple reason. I was, at that time, the publishing CEO of The National Interest. And I thought it would be inappropriate for me to vote in any presidential elections, whatever personal preferences I could have. But I certainly, liked, basically, Trump’s approach.
I was, before that, an informal advisor to Rand Paul. And, I knew Paul fairly well. I did not know Trump at all. It was kind of news to me that he would consider himself a presidential candidate. But I basically liked his foreign policy approach.
I wasn’t sure that he had much of a chance, but I thought it would be helpful to foreign policy debates to have somebody like him presenting his perspective. And then I was at a luncheon at the CNN Time Warner headquarters and, Jeff Bewkes at that time was the chairman, and he was a member of our board. And Richard Plepler was another very active member of our board, and he was CEO of the home box office. So they organized a small fundraiser at the center. Henry Kissinger spoke, and explained how wonderful the center was. And said some kind of words about me, and basically, it was a small, intimate fundraiser.
A young guy came up to me, and said that, his name was, Kushner. And that he was pleased to be acquainted, and could we talk sometime? And, I said, sure. And so when, next time I came, to New York, which was in a couple of weeks, we got together, and then at the end of the conversation, he said, ‘You know, we have a possible project for you. Would you be interested in Trump delivering a foreign policy speech at the center?’
And, I said, of course, as long as it is not a partisan speech, and as long as it would be in the framework of what organizations like ours normally do. And we talked about that, and I thought that we had a good understanding. And then Jared asked me, he said we got a foreign policy team, advisory team. But then he said we had to put it together very quickly, because everybody was asking, who are our advisors?
We brought a small group of advisors, but that was not necessarily the best we could do. And we talked about creating a small and informal advisory group. We actually agreed that we would not even call it an advisory group, because some people in this group were not Trump supporters. And they could say things which would not make a campaign very comfortable. So, it was a group of foreign policy consultants. And Jeff Sessions, he was in charge of the national security kind of group in the campaign.
And it also so happened that he was a member of my Senate Advisory Council, and we were good friends. So he took it, basically under his umbrella. That’s how I became involved with the Trump campaign. It was, a very informal and a very loose involvement.
Matt Taibbi: The only reason I ask that is because of the events of 2024, and what happened to you, the way it was explained later. Before we get to that moment: did you have an inkling in Joe Biden’s first term, that you might have to make a change to the way you did business or changed your schedule as a journalist?
Dimitri Simes: Well, the US-Russian relationship was deteriorating very, very quickly. In addition to that, my ability to express my views in the United States was declining, very, very quickly. I still could publish in The National Interest. But basically, not much more than that.
Matt Taibbi: They weren’t taking your calls if you wanted to submit an editorial or that kind of thing?
Dimitri Simes: You know, it was not like that. It was not like, I was submitting and they were not taking. It was almost everywhere. They got new opinion editors. And it was very clear that they were taking a different direction. I had a couple of pieces with my friend and co-host, Graham Edison, who was a member of our board. I had a couple of pieces in the Wall Street Journal with General Boyd, who was chairman of our board.
But it was very clear that there was no space for somebody with my views. You know, you don’t need to be told we will not accept your pieces. It was pretty clear that I could see that some people who were coming weren’t very enthusiastic to send me to events. We were not doing it anymore. Nobody told me that I was subjected to cancel culture.
But, you know, if you’re subjected to that, you don’t need to be told.
Matt Taibbi: Which views in particular do you think were the most unwelcome?
Dimitri Simes: That it was possible and desirable to have a normal relationship with Russia. The notion that the Russian-Ukrainian relationship was very complex. And, to say who did what to whom at what point. It was not a very easy exercise.
In Moscow, I also discovered that people who were very willing to come as our guests. Including from the Atlantic Council. And I allowed them to say on the program that Putin was a war criminal, to say all kinds of controversial things on Channel One.
But I could see that their willingness to take part in something like that in the Russian TV program was, kind of this ruling this was declining very quickly. Also, I had a very good relationship traditionally with, the assembly in Moscow.
And whenever I would come to Moscow, I always would see, whoever was an ambassador, and they would give the dinners, lunches for me, and etc. And particularly with, Ambassador Huntsman who used to be a member of the Central Board of Directors.
And I spoke at his embassy a couple of times in different formats. And I talked to him, and his Deputy Chief of Mission about my interest in taking part in the program. And initially, Huntsman was very supportive, with an understanding that, obviously, I would not be pretending to express official U.S. opinions.
And I think that, Huntsman thought that my views were pretty mainstream. But then clearly somebody told him something. And they made very clear that, no, they would not support the program in any shape or form. And, basically, said that they hope I would not do it.
And, you know, I was a kind of already planning to do it, and I never was a government official, precisely because I did not like to take guidance from government officials.
And the more I talk to Channel One, the more I was beginning to believe that I would have considerable autonomy.
So, there was a kind of a process of my natural exclusion from the American elite foreign policy mainstream. And I don’t think, you know, it was one step. It was a process.
Matt Taibbi: So I wasn’t planning to ask this, but you obviously, you lived in the United States for a long time, and one of the potential benefits of having your voice in front of the American public, particularly after the war, but even beforehand, would have been to provide some of the history and background of these situations. How would you assess the American public’s knowledge of things like the history of Russian-Ukrainian relations?
Dimitri Simes: Well, I found it almost non-existent, but there was something else, more problematic for me. What was more and more problematic for me, was that the new generation of American foreign policy elite, did not know history, and did not try to understand history.
When I came to the United States I very soon met, Paul Nitze. And, you know, Paul was considered a great headliner. But I could talk to him, because he, he went through the Cuban Missile Crisis, because he remembered World War II.
He understood why it was important to have, at a minimum, a normal relationship with Russia. And he also, he understood, that the Soviet Union, at that time the Soviet Union, to put it mildly, was not a very attractive country.
That’s why I decided to immigrate. But he also understood that this was not black and white. And even somebody like Reagan understood it. And they asked me to help him to prepare for his first meeting with Gorbachev.
And I was very impressed how he tried to understand what makes Gorbachev tick. And, try to understand Russian perspective. I think at a certain point, this perspective became less and less relevant in Washington.
And I don’t mean that they had to accept it, but I thought it would be useful to understand it. So, I do not think that, again, there was one reason for my estrangement from the American foreign policy elite. But I will say that, obviously, it was a kind of, an action-reaction process, on both sides.
Matt Taibbi: In August 2024, and then shortly after, in the first week in September, first, the FBI comes to your home. Can you explain the sequence of events and tell us a little bit about that? Were you surprised? What was your reaction at that time?
Dimitri Simes: Well, I don’t know what term to use. I was shocked… But I also knew that nobody else, and there were plenty of American citizens working for Russian federal channels. I knew that no one else was in any kind of trouble.
I also knew that I was never told by any U.S. government agency, that I was doing something wrong. I had a very good lawyers at that time.
And they did not tell that, that I had, any problem. And basically, the assumption was at first, as the State Department was explaining at that time, including publicly, that those, sanctions, they were not directed against journalists.
Their purpose was to deprive Russian federal channels, which were considered propaganda channels. The purpose, we were told, was to deprive them of American financial support.
And since Channel One did not broadcast in the United States at all at that time, clearly, I in no way was involved in any financial support for Russian official TV.
But second, I thought that what I was doing was pretty objective, that I had disagreements with Russian officials, on there, including with no less than, President Putin.
Matt Taibbi: Whom you interviewed also in 2023?
Dimitri Simes: Yes, but I was on a panel with him considerably earlier, and we had a disagreement.
So, I did not think that I would be a likely target of something like that. I fully understood that I was not a very popular man in Biden’s Washington.
But certainly, the idea is that the FBI, suddenly would come to my home. And it was totally unexpected, and they knew that I was not in the United States. They knew that my wife was not in the United States. You know, if they really wanted to arrest me there was, there was every reason for them to wait a little bit, and that I would come for a visit.
Matt Taibbi: Right.
Dimitri Simes: So, I couldn’t entirely understand what was the purpose of that, unless they had a reason to deprive me of an opportunity to come back to the United States and to make some kind of political point. I don’t know.
Matt Taibbi: So, let’s talk about the charges and what they were alleging. When the FBI came and raided your home first, and then subsequently charged you criminally.
The charge was essentially violating the International Economic Emergency Powers Act, or IEEPA, which is a sanctions regime. But what’s unusual about it is that the overt act here was, if I’m reading correctly, it’s hosting and producing the television program The Great Game. So, you were essentially accused of violating a sanctions regime for hosting a TV program. Is that right? Am I interpreting that correctly?
Dimitri Simes: No, that’s exactly right. There was also a second charge. And that was money laundering.
And I thought it was quite a remarkable charge. Because, they were not alleging that I was involved in any financial transactions. All they have alleged, and that was true, that I was paid my salary in Moscow.
And incidentally, this was one of the banks that had an agreement with the US Treasury, so if there was an American citizen, they were providing full information on their salary, and on all their transactions. So, presumably the FBI could see very easily that I was getting my salary, and that I was using this salary to pay my mortgage in the United States, but most important, to pay my taxes.
I was, paying hundreds of thousands in taxes, in federal taxes. And, I did not have that kind of income… in the United States anymore. So I was, paid by Channel One in Moscow, and I was, transferring the money to my account in Washington, to pay my taxes. It did not occur to me — I guess I didn’t have enough imagination, that it could be considered money laundering.
Matt Taibbi: I’m still confused about this part. How is that money laundering? I vaguely understand what they’re trying to say with the sanctions.
Dimitri Simes: In their view, it was, illegal for me to work for Channel One. Accordingly, my salary was not a legal salary, so if I was using this illegal salary to pay American taxes, which they were dutifully accepting these payments for several years. Without any questions. Without any audit. And then suddenly it became money laundering, you know?
Normally, if there is a problem with your taxes. Normally, IRS would ask you, would raise questions, would warn you. I never had an audit in my life. So you can imagine that I was extremely, extremely surprised. And I also could not imagine what was it that they expected to find there.
What could they conceivably find there? They, confiscated, they said that they were, taking things which they suspected I got illegally, meaning that I used my salary in Moscow to buy these things in Washington.
But the house was bought before U.S. sanctions against Russian radio channels. Most of our cars were bought before that. And practically all our paintings and antiques were bought before then. The most valuable paintings and antiques, actually, I have inherited from my parents. There was a very beautiful and expensive icon, which my mother got from Andrei Sakharov. My mother was a prominent human rights lawyer.
And there were some paintings which my parents got from Moscow avant-garde artists, because again, my parents were considered very supportive of dissidents. And they took all of that.
There was one thing which they did not take.
Matt Taibbi: What did they not take?
Dimitri Simes: My handgun. They put it on my night table.
Matt Taibbi: You think they were trying to send you a message?
Dimitri Simes: Well, nobody would think that if the FBI comes to your home, and they find a weapon … It was a Sig Sauer, a pretty good gun used by U.S. Special Forces. And then they did not take it, and they did not ask any questions about it.
Matt Taibbi: These things must have had an enormous personal meaning for you.
Dimitri Simes: Look, I lived in the United States for 50 years. All my life, my wife for 30 years. This was… this was, all our possessions, and they did damage to the house, they were breaking the floor, they broke the roof.
It’s about 40 people team, to take what in this operation? There were trucks coming, you know, to remove our property.
Matt Taibbi: What’s so fascinating and disturbing after this raid that had so many people take part in it, and after, there were leaks to newspapers, in particular, the New York Times. And then subsequently, when you were charged, you were accused of spreading disinformation and state-sponsored narratives, and the strong implication was that you were part of a Russian attempt to impact the 2024 election, But first of all, your show is in Russian for Russians, yes?
Dimitri Simes: The show is in Russia for Russians. And the second thing is that even now, during the war, when, obviously, there is less freedom to discuss certain things, even under those circumstances, I will assure you that I never am told what I should use on my program. And I will tell you that I’m never told whom I should invite as being guest of my program. What I would not tell you is that there are no restrictions. There are restrictions. There are restrictions during the war.
Some of these restrictions are necessary, or at least sensible. Some restrictions which I would not always agree with, and these are restrictions if I disagree, which actually is a rare case, I discuss with the channel management. But I most certainly do not accept for a second that I engage in propaganda. Propaganda means that somebody directs me to do something.
That is not… that is not the case, at all.
Matt Taibbi: But they specifically charged you with also disinformation, which became a very vogue term in America.
Dimitri Simes: I’m not aware of any specific example, of any specific example. They did mention, they said something, in their press release about Bucha. There’s only one problem; I have never talked about Bucha. Never, never, ever… Never, ever. So they could not find a single instance when they could say that I engaged in this information.
Matt Taibbi: Do you think, though, that your arrest, the charges levied against you, and the search, do you think that was connected to the election?
Dimitri Simes: Well, that certainly was a part of what Trump calls Russian hoax. And I was probably one of the most investigated people in the United States. I was investigated by the FBI the late 1970s.
And my critics who use this without without mentioning that the result of this investigation was the FBI provided information, to the immigration court, that they hear absolutely no reason why I should not be given a US citizenship. And I was getting a US citizenship, through a congressional act.
So, nobody was obliged to give me the citizenship, before a 10-year period, which was established for people who, like me, were members of the Young Communist League Organization.
Matt Taibbi: Komsomol?
Dimitri Simes: Exactly. And there we are, at that point, gave me, a clean bill of health.
Now, then there was a Mueller investigation. And, if you read all these pages about me, about 100 references, what I think is remarkable is that not only they did not charge me with anything, but we very specifically explained, that in each case, they have investigated my actions had a benign and legitimate explanation.
But interestingly, instead of, saying, well perhaps the guy is really innocent, and perhaps we were, actually, unfairly bad-mouthing him. Instead of that, the reaction was, oh, he has to be really sneaky, right?
During peak Russiagate mania, the American citizen Simes, who’d advised other presidents, suddenly became a mysterious “pro-Kremlin” figure
This is the [former KGB chief Lavrenty] Beria mindset. If you cannot prove somebody’s guilt, it doesn’t mean that this person is innocent. It means that he is particularly terrible and dangerous.
Matt Taibbi: Show me the person, I’ll show you the crime, basically.
Dimitri Simes: But I understood, that, they were particularly angry with me for one phone call I have received, or at least I was told so, I had very few communications with the United States. Because after I have left, after the work have started, after everything, I did not have too many American contacts.
But there was one specific phone call when, I was told that it would be interesting for me to come to the United States and to share my impressions, of, what was happening in Russia and U.S.-Russian relations.
And, that phone call was, just a couple of weeks, before the FBI would be moved against, my house.
Matt Taibbi: And who invited you?
Dimitri Simes: Well, as you can imagine, I am not at liberty to talk about that. All I can say that this was not a U.S. government official. I actually did not even decide that I would be coming to the United States at that time, because with everything, that was going on between Russia and Ukraine. I was asked by the channel to continue working, throughout August. So, it wasn’t like I had any immediate plans at the time to come to the United States.
But I found it interesting, that when I… when I was thinking what could prompt this indictment. That was the only thing, that, came to my mind. Obviously, if I came to the United States, I would say some pretty critical things, of, the Biden administration conduct at that time.
Matt Taibbi: And you might have been arrested.
Dimitri Simes: So, at that time, it did not occur to me that I would be arrested. Well, it genuinely did not occur to me. There was… the Department of Treasury, if they think that somebody who violated sanctions, they normally would, send them a questionnaire, send them a warning. There was nothing like that. You have, to appreciate, that I was not doing anything secret. I was not hiding anything. Everything I was doing was an open book.
So, if, there were serious concerns about my activities. It was very easy to express these concerns to me directly.
Matt Taibbi: I have just a few more questions. Can you help explain to American audiences why they should pay attention to your case, because it seems you’re being charged with being employed as a media figure for a country that has fallen in disfavor with the United States. You’re not accused of doing anything secret, you’re not accused of having said something libelous…
Dimitri Simes: I am not accused of any contacts with Russian security services. And I have none. Everything I’m doing is pretty public. I do talk to Russian officials; that’s a part of my job. Mostly, it would not be them calling me, but me calling them, because I try to be sure I understand, the official perspective, obviously, before I go on there.
But I do, you know, I was CEO of an influential foreign policy magazine. I know how to ask questions, and how to try to confirm facts, and I’m not doing, in Russia, anything beyond that.
Matt Taibbi: So, but it seems to me your case could impact not only other employees of other state media organizations, but also American employees of other American employees here in the States, of state media?
Dimitri Simes: Well, first of all, let me say, in my view, precisely because there are no charges of espionage against me. There are no serious charges of disinformation against me. I don’t know what are the charges against me, except sanctions for elections.
And in this case, there happens to be the First Amendment, which should be above executive guidance from the Department of Treasury.
That’s not to say that I could violated even that, but still, there is the First Amendment. And I think the casual attitude to the First Amendment and, threatening me with 40 years in jail, I think it’s a very, chilling, message to any American who is expressing his views. And an argument, well, that’s not because of his views, but because he was paid in the process.
The Founding Fathers were very specific about that, that they were trying to cover political activities, and most people who engage in politics and in professional journalism they’re paid. So, I have to say, this is a very chilling a message to anyone who wants to express his views.
But let me say also something. I, tried during all this period. Not to raise my case seriously.
I have a very, comfortable life in Moscow. I, like a lot of people, and, I always wanted to have a TV show. Actually, it was my dream. And, suddenly, when I was well in my mid-70s, this dream, came through. And now, I’m anchoring one of the most, prominent political programs in the country, and they’re doing it 5 days a week. I am also a professor at MGIMO, you know what MGIMO is?
I’m not asking anyone to have pity for me. But I think it’s, not normal. I think it is not just, that I, can, cannot come back to the United States. And that if somebody is interested in my views, that they would be able to ask me questions. And last but not least, they are, constantly complaining in virtually every administration that Russia arrests Americans citizens, that Russia is using these people, as hostages.
And they say that this is unfair and politically motivated. And I will ask you a rhetorical question, if I came to the United States and they arrested me. And they put me in jail. Wouldn’t they think that it contradicts U.S. official notion that things like that should not be politically motivated, and shouldn’t they at least entertain a possibility, that there may be an American who could be in trouble as a result of that? And I’m not even talking about an innocent American, because there are a lot of Americans in Russia, and there are a lot of regulations in Russia, I’m not saying that it should be illegal and selective. I should say that it obviously, is, influenced by perceptions. What kind of relations you have with this particular country, and what, could be the implications of your actions?
And I’m sure that they would say, tell you at the State Department, that if Russia would ask, a prominent American journalist, there would be consequences, right?
Matt Taibbi: One would think.
Dimitri Simes: I would think, and I would not necessarily have issue with that, up to a point.
But they clearly are creating a situation, if they had their way with me, that probably would not, would not be, very fortunate, probably it would be very unfortunate for me.
But I think that it also could be unfortunate for somebody else. And it is surprising how many people in the U.S. government do not think at all about consequences of reactions, and do not think that there is a possibility of a kind of a response they would not find very welcome.
Matt Taibbi: That leads to my last question. You’ve chosen to defend yourself, your court case is proceeding. Obviously, you have your own interests that you want to defend yourself, and your good name, but is it also for the sake of the First Amendment, to show that its importance? I just wanted to ask about your motivations.
Dimitri Simes: But let’s be very clear, for a very long time, I could raise this issue, and I suspect that I would find some enthusiastic audience in Russia. I have never done it, because I saw that there are enough troubles between the two countries, for me to bring my personal case as an unnecessary additional problem, even if it is a very significant problem. But I also thought that what was done to me was done, for, political reasons, that this was a part of the Russia hoax.
And that, I thought that this could be kind of things which would be addressed by the Trump administration, and now, now I see that, President Trump said on many occasions it’s all, Russian hoax, Russian hoax, it’s all Biden, Biden, and that, he would never do things like that.
And, I have an impression that if I would remain silent, there would be a false impression that things like that are okay and that you can do it with total impunity. That’s wrong, and I like to believe, that, what I’m doing is a public service.
Matt Taibbi: Mr. Simes, Dimitri, thank you very much for taking the time to talk.
