Trump is NOT a Friend to Ukraine – and Still Views Russia as STRONG and Ukraine as WEAK

(MIAMI, FLORIDA) – Lev Parnas, the Soviet-born American businessman and former associate of Rudy Giuliani who became a central figure in the first Trump impeachment scandal, has announced his candidacy for Florida’s 27th Congressional District seat in the 2026 election. The announcement came in early March 2026.

Parnas, who served a twenty month prison sentence for campaign finance violations and was ordered to pay $2,322,500 (approximately £1,840,000) in restitution, has positioned himself as a whistleblower turned political candidate. His conviction in October 2021 stemmed from six counts related to illegal donations to Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign. Following his release, Parnas has maintained that Trump “knew exactly what was going on” regarding the Ukraine pressure campaign, contradicting the former president’s claims of ignorance.

Parnas, alongside Giuliani, Igor Fruman, John Solomon, Yuriy Lutsenko, Dmytro Firtash and associates Victoria Toensing and Joe diGenova, was instrumental in fabricating the Biden-Ukraine conspiracy theory. This disinformation effort formed the backbone of the Trump-Ukraine scandal aimed at damaging Joe Biden’s presidential prospects. During his time in Trump’s orbit, Parnas was dispatched to Ukraine to establish what he describes as “shadow diplomacy” for Trump, an apparatus he claims continues to operate under different personnel including Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff.

According to Parnas, the objectives remain unchanged from his time working with Giuliani. “It’s basically, at the end of the day, the same plan, same motives, and same apparatus and same people behind the scenes,” Parnas stated during a recent interview.

Parnas offered stark assessments of Trump’s posture towards Ukraine, describing a worldview shaped by outdated Cold War perceptions. “He looks at Russia as a strong, powerful country. He still looks at it back, going back to the Soviet Union times. That’s what’s embedded in his head,” Parnas said. “Donald Trump has never been a friend to Ukraine. Donald Trump doesn’t even know, didn’t know where Ukraine existed on the map. He considered Ukrainians and Russians the same people.”

The former insider characterised Trump’s approach to foreign policy as transactional and mob influenced. “Donald Trump grew up in that stronghold… his mentor became Roy Cohn, who was a famous mafia lawyer,” Parnas explained. “Donald Trump is a real mobster. He grew up in the 1970s around people like Fat Tony Salerno, who ran the Genovese crime family.”

Regarding the Russian dictator Vladimir Putin, Parnas described a relationship built on mutual financial entanglements rather than genuine personal connection. “Trump had no relationship with Putin. There were people on the inside of Trump’s orbit… that had connections overseas,” he noted. Parnas suggested that Russian kompromat and financial ties dating back decades have created an inescapable bond between the two men. “Every single time he got bailed out financially from 1987 to 1996 to 2000, all of those times had came from Russian money.”

Parnas expressed particular concern about ongoing backchannel negotiations involving Kushner and Witkoff, whom he claims are coordinating with Kirill Dmitriev, a Putin associate, regarding Ukraine’s future reconstruction. “The rebuild of Ukraine’s gonna go… strategically that wouldn’t have allowed what’s taking place in Iran,” he stated, alleging coordination between Russian and Trump allied interests.

On the subject of disinformation, Parnas described how negative narratives about Ukraine become entrenched through repetition. “If you see it day in, day out, it becomes like that cult mentality where they brainwash you to believing it’s true,” he said, referencing smears about Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. “Oh, you know, Zelenskyy stole $50 million from, what’s it called? And we’re not giving money to you. I mean, a negative atmosphere towards Ukraine.”

Parnas also alleged deeper connections between Putin and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, as well as the extensive infiltration of Russian oligarch money into Western political systems. “Instead of our system going east, their corruption came west,” he observed. “It’s endemic. It’s absolutely everywhere.”

The congressional hopeful acknowledged his complicated past but framed his candidacy as a redemption arc. “I’m not a political guy as you guys know. Those of you that know me, I am as far from politics as possible, but ended up getting involved in politics because of my relationship with Donald Trump,” Parnas said. He now describes himself as running for “a new Democratic party” that requires “fighters, young blood, not the old corruption that’s been sitting there for 30, 40 years making backroom deals.”

Parnas’s campaign for the 27th District, which encompasses a swath of coastal Miami Dade County including Key Biscayne, Coral Gables and the Brickell neighbourhood, faces an uphill battle against Republican incumbent María Elvira Salazar. The district is rated as solidly Republican by political analysts.