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By John Helmer, Moscow
@bears_with [2]
In Jeffrey Epstein’s decade between 2009 and 2019 he tried ever so hard to meet the President of Russia, Vladimir Putin.
That’s to say, between Epstein’s release from prison on his Florida state conviction and sentence for procuring a minor for prostitution and for soliciting a prostitute, and then his re-arrest and imprisonment in New York on federal charges of sex trafficking of minors, he asked his staff, friends, business associates, US Government retirees, ex-government officials from Norway, Israel, UAE, and Japan, and Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Vitaly Churkin (died in February 2017), to procure an invitation for him to meet Putin.
They succeeded in getting Epstein invitations to business promotions in Sochi, Vladivostok, and St. Petersburg, at which crowd meetings with Putin were promised. But Epstein refused. On May 13, 2013, he claimed in an email to former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak that Putin “had asked that I meet him the same time as his economic conference. I told him no. If he wants to meet he will need to set aside real time and privacy. Let’s see what happens.”
Nothing ever did.
Epstein’s scheme was simple. He targeted one connection to make another connection he believed the first already had to the Kremlin in order to then trade the appearance of the Kremlin connection for Epstein to others willing to pay Epstein introducing, consulting or finder’s fees if the appearance of Putin’s agreement could be fabricated into money.
Epstein also needed to prove that his criminal conviction and jail time counted for nothing in international politics, investment banking, high society. Like washing money, this was reputation laundering.
“You can explain to Putin,” Epstein told Thorbjorn Jagland, a former Norwegian prime minister and Council of Europe politician, “that there should be a sopshiticated [sic] Russian version of bitcoin, It would be the most advanced financial instrument available on a global basis”.
This was amusingly familiar to a Russian, especially one who knew enough English to appreciate the double meaning of Epstein’s misspelling; more importantly, it exposes the naïve superiority complex he was demonstrating to Russians whose experience in laundering, transferring, and crypto-hiding amounted to multiple billions to trillions of dollars more than Epstein had ever handled. As a money launderer, Russians understood Epstein was never clever enough himself and employed no organization to work for him.
Jagland did nothing with the email. Jagland could do nothing for himself except exaggerate the group session he had at the Kremlin in December 2016 when the Kremlin published [3] an 8-line speech Putin gave. Two years later, in December 2018 [4], there were even more officials with Jagland at the table and Putin’s communiqué was three lines shorter. Jagland’s refusal to withdraw support for European sanctions of Russia on Crimea and for prejudicial judgements of the European Court of Justice against Russia left him in a tupik – that’s Russian for dead end. That’s where Jagland’s “connection” with Putin ended too.
Its remaining value to Jagland was to trade it to Epstein in return for an evening’s accommodation and entertainment at his Paris house. “Is it same prosedure [sic] as last time that I can stay with you,” Jagland asked Epstein. “I promise not make noice [sic] or ruin you.”
In both directions, Jagland’s and Epstein’s, this operation was a hustle. Jagland got what he didn’t pay for; Epstein got nothing.
Epstein’s trafficking of Russian women was more successful. The women proved their exceptional beauty and their relatively low cost compared to American women, and thus they proved to be the commodity that asset hustlers like Epstein always appreciate. He bought them cheap and sold dear. Also, the Russian women have kept silent.
In what the US Justice Department calls in public release its “Epstein Library”, updated through February 4, 2026, there are 1,021 entries for the name Putin.
Almost all of them turn out to be press clippings Epstein collected himself or had sent to him by his small staff or others. These sources were all from the mainstream US media; there is no evidence that Epstein sought the more confidential reports of the banks, due diligence firms, special consultancies, or think tanks with which he was connected through their individual executives.
[5]Source: https://www.justice.gov/epstein [6]
Epstein believed the Israeli and Norwegian politicians whom he entertained at home, Ehud Barak [7] and Thorbjorn Jagland, were his best opportunities for getting Putin’s agreement to a meeting. Barak had had telephone and face-to-face meetings with Putin in 2000 and 2001, when Barak was Israel’s Prime Minister; they also met again in 2006 at the St. Petersburg Economic Forum when Barak asked for a brief meeting to discuss “the Middle East situation”. Barak failed to deliver for Epstein.
Jagland [8] is recorded in the Kremlin log as meeting Putin four times in delegation as the Secretary-General of the Council of Europe – 2011, 2013, 2016, and 2018. Jagland liked to show off, telling Putin after a visit to the Winter Olympics preparations in Sochi in 2013 [9]: “Being a sportsman myself, when I looked at the ski jump – I was a ski jumper when I was young – I wished I was 40 years younger. Actually, my grandfather was a judge when we had the Olympics in 1952 in Oslo, during the ski jump competition, so I’m coming from a sports family. So I’m very much looking forward to the Sochi Olympics.”
Barak also liked to show off his insider contacts with Epstein:
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[12]Epstein also tried using an Emirati, Sultan Ahmed bin Sulayem [13], to use his Russian business contacts to reach Putin. Sulayem was the US-educated head of the Dubai ports authority and chief executive of DP World. His shipping and real estate businesses in Dubai led to his attendance at international business conferences in St Petersburg and Vladivostok. To Epstein, Sulayem exaggerated his closeness to Putin at these meetings.
There is no Kremlin record the two of them met. However, a Dubai newspaper reported that at the Vladivostok Economic Forum in September 2015, Sulayem discussed [14] a DP World investment in Russia’s fareastern ports. This did not materialize. By the time it did in 2023 [15], Epstein was dead.
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[17]Epstein attempted to use his famously expensive home in New York and his American business contacts to draw Russian oligarchs in the city into contact, starting with invitations to parties at his home. The dossier of released emails reveals Epstein tried approaches to Oleg Deripaska, Roman Abramovich, Dmitry Rybolovlev, Victor Vekselberg, Andrei Kuzmichev, and Len Blavatnik.
Several attempts at crashing one of Abramovich’s parties failed:
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[19]Epstein attracted hustlers. One of them, a New York city real estate salesman, proposed in December 2016 to broker the sale of Epstein’s Manhattan home to Abramovich and to the Alfa Bank partner, Alexei Kuzmichev.
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[21]Epstein turned the proposal down, claiming he had been approached already by Abramovich with an offer of $250 million, and that Epstein had “turned [it] down.” This was false. Epstein could not admit in the market that he had no legal right to sell the property; it had been paid for by one of Epstein’s financiers, Leslie Wexner; Epstein occupied the house but ownership was shared between Wexner and Epstein trusts [22]. When the house was sold [23] in 2021, two years after Epstein’s death, the asking price was $88 million; the sale fetched $51 million.
The closest Epstein managed to get to a Russian oligarch was an exchange of emails with Len Blavatnik [24]. These show the latter resisting the lure Epstein used of dinner party invitations as an opportunity to meet individuals more important than himself. Epstein tried this hustle twice — in 2010 and again in 2014. Blavatnik refused.
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[26]The only direct high-level Russian contact appearing in the Epstein Library occurred with Vitaly Churkin. This was an exchange of emails and SMS messages between Epstein and Churkin who was then Russia’s Ambassador to the United Nations in New York. In May 2016 he asked for Epstein’s help in getting his son Maxim a job in New York. “Any Maxim help is confidential”, Churkin said. Epstein confirmed, then in August 2016 he messaged [27] Churkin to say: “first job confirmed to start day after Labor Day”. At the same time, Epstein was arranging [28] for Churkin to meet Barak and Tom Barrack; then Barrack, financier of Donald Trump’s family businesses, was a leading figure in Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign [28].
The last meeting between Churkin and Epstein was in the afternoon of December 2, 2016 [29]. Churkin died on February 20, 2017.
An attempt by British propagandists to make Epstein appear to be in league with Russian intelligence was published in The Telegraph on February 2, 2026. It is a double fabrication, not only of the Russian evidence but of Epstein’s record of failure in every Russian approach he attempted.
[30]Source: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/world-news/2026/02/01/epstein-links-to-putin-and-fsb-raise-fears-he-was-a-russian/ [31]
The propagandists among each and all of Russia’s enemies have missed the biggest of Epstein’s disclosures. This is because it’s invisible: it is missing from the Department of Justice files but this is not because it is being hidden by the Trump Administration to protect Trump and his Republican allies, nor by the Democrats in Congress covering up for their allies and moneymen.
This isn’t a secret of sex with Russian women.
The record shows that at no point in his career did Epstein spend any of his considerable cash on buying real intelligence on his targets – none whatever on Russia, on Israel, on the UAE. Instead, he was given excerpts from the New York Times or Washington Post. He never asked for more.
Those newspapers produce disinformation. Intelligence of the necessary quality is regularly contracted for and delivered to the credit and risk committees of the bankers and investors with whom Epstein worked and for whom he managed money. Since there is no evidence that Epstein took credits himself from the institutions these individuals represented, directed, or owned, he and his contact and influence networks weren’t subject to the standard due diligence which is required for institutional loans to be approved. Epstein made money by leveraging private credit – his creditors appear not to have investigated him, and he didn’t investigate the Israelis, Americans, Norwegians or Emiratis with whom he communicated. Certainly not the Russians he targeted.
Unlike his banker, broker and lawyer associates, Epstein did not pay retainers for regular or even occasional reports from ex-intelligence agency veterans from the CIA, FBI, MI6, or Mossad. For a professional money manager, or high-society influence peddler, or low-class hustler, the Epstein files reveal he had an exceptional lack of curiosity and an extraordinarily unprofessional ignorance.
This is evidence that Epstein was always an agent, asset, source of chickenfeed, or bagman but never a handler, controller, or spymaster. Who they were is another story. In this story there is conclusive evidence they weren’t Russian.