Senate Aide Investigated Over Unofficial Actions in Ukraine
Kyle Parker says he delivered sniper gear as part of his unabashed support for Ukraine. Investigators say there may be “counterintelligence issues.”
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Ukrainian marines unloading ammunition at a training ground for recruits in the Zaporizhzhia region last July.Credit...David Guttenfelder for The New York Times
A senior Capitol Hill staff member who is a longtime voice on Russia policy is under congressional investigation over his frequent trips to Ukraine’s war zones and providing what he said was $30,000 in sniper gear to its military, documents show.
The staff member, Kyle Parker, is the senior Senate adviser for the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe, known as the Helsinki Commission. The commission is led by members of Congress and staffed by congressional aides. It is influential on matters of democracy and security and has been vocal in supporting Ukraine.
A confidential report by the commission’s director and general counsel, which The New York Times reviewed, said that the equipment transfer could make Mr. Parker an unregistered foreign agent. It said that Mr. Parker had traveled Ukraine’s front lines wearing camouflage and Ukrainian military insignia and had hired a Ukrainian official for a U.S. government fellowship over the objections of congressional ethics and security officials.
And it raised the possibility that he was “wittingly or unwittingly being targeted and exploited by a foreign intelligence service,” citing unspecified “counterintelligence issues” that should be referred to the F.B.I.
A representative for Mr. Parker said he had done nothing wrong. He said Mr. Parker was the target of a “campaign of retaliation” for making accusations of misconduct against the report’s authors.
Representative Joe Wilson, right, the Helsinki Commission chairman, in Bucha, Ukraine, in May 2023.Credit...Andrew Kravchenko/Associated Press
The report so troubled the commission’s chairman, Representative Joe Wilson, Republican of South Carolina, that he recommended Mr. Parker be fired to protect national security, records show. He cited “serious alleged improper acts involving Ukrainian and other foreign individuals.”
“I urgently recommend you secure his immediate resignation or termination,” Mr. Wilson, a supporter of Ukraine, wrote in a Nov. 1 letter to the commission’s Democratic co-chairman, Senator Benjamin L. Cardin of Maryland. Mr. Parker’s representative said he had not been asked to resign, and had no plans to.
Mr. Parker remains on the commission pending what three U.S. officials described as a broad investigation into staff conduct, including the accusations in the report and accusations from Mr. Parker against the commission’s executive director, Steven Schrage, and counsel, Michael Geffroy, who wrote the report.
The misconduct investigation has disrupted the Helsinki Commission at a perilous time for Ukraine and its relationship with Congress. The country has suffered setbacks in its war with Russia and is desperate for more money and weapons. Republicans are threatening to block $60 billion in additional aid.
In his letter, Mr. Wilson warned that scandal at the commission could jeopardize “future Ukraine aid.”
The Helsinki Commission is a key pro-Ukraine voice, both on Capitol Hill and in Europe. Mr. Parker is one of its longest-serving aides. He is known in foreign-policy circles as a driving force behind a 2012 human rights law, the Magnitsky Act, inspired by the death of the Russian anticorruption crusader Sergei L. Magnitsky.
The report raises the prospect that Mr. Parker’s strident support for Ukraine crossed ethical or legal lines and that he, a U.S. government employee, might have been functioning as an agent of Ukraine. Through his representative, Mr. Parker denied that.
Representatives for Mr. Cardin and Mr. Wilson referred questions to the Office of the House Employment Counsel, which did not respond to messages.
Mr. Parker is one of many Americans who poured into Ukraine after Russia’s 2022 invasion. Some offered money and supplies or fought alongside Ukrainian soldiers. Others were dishonest, incompetent or preoccupied with internecine squabbles.
In lectures, podcasts and social media posts, Mr. Parker said he had traveled to Ukraine at least seven times since the invasion began in February 2022, including to combat zones, describing himself as “the most well-traveled American official in wartime Ukraine.”
Social media photographs from those trips show him wearing camouflage and the insignia of Ukrainian units. In one picture, he wears a provincial military administration’s patch. In another, he wears camouflage and a Ukrainian drone unit patch. In another, he says he is “plotting the liberation” of Luhansk with a Ukrainian official.
