The U.S. official overseeing Donald Trump's contested White House ballroom quietly held talks with Vladimir Putin's aides during a June trip to Russia, in what looks like an off-the-books attempt at diplomacy on the war in Ukraine.
Rodney Mims Cook Jr., 70, chair of the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts, attended the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, an event often called Putin's answer to Davos, becoming the first U.S. official to appear there in nearly a decade. According to the Financial Times, Cook met privately with Kremlin figures including Anton Kobyakov, a senior Putin aide, and was given a diplomatic passport and briefings before he traveled.
Sources told the outlet that White House officials hoped an unlikely envoy like Cook might help break the deadlock in peace talks. Cook declined to answer the paper's questions about the meetings or whether Trump had personally sent him.
"There are many requests," he said. "We're working on that now."
The trip cut into territory owned by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who told senators in June he was not aware a U.S. delegation was attending. The episode adds to questions about the administration's handling of Russia.
Publicly, Cook leaned into flattery. He passed along a "good hello from your friend, President Trump" during a Q&A with Putin and said the two capitals had "a lot of ideas to talk about." He spent much of the forum praising Russian architecture and showing off his Atlanta "dacha," and shared a roundtable with actor Steven Seagal, a longtime Putin supporter.
Kobyakov, who runs the forum's organizing committee, is not known to have played a role in Ukraine negotiations, which have been led by Kremlin aide Vladimir Medinsky. The talks come 17 months after Trump vowed to end the war, and the push to do so remains stalled.