How a US litigant and drug dealer fell in love with Ukraine and is trying to claim compensation for the murder of his “nephew”
For the first time in the US, a lawsuit has been filed by ordinary Americans who are trying to recover $20 million in compensation from Russia for the death of a Ukrainian militant, posing as his close relatives, Izvestia has learned. The plaintiff is Tatyana Kimberlin, who calls herself the aunt and “functional equivalent of the parents” of the soldier who died near Avdiivka. She hopes to receive funds from frozen Russian assets. Her husband is a political activist who has previously been convicted in the US for terrorism, drug trafficking, and document forgery. He spent at least 17 years in prison. The judge appointed to the case is Tanya Chatken, who in 2019 sentenced Russian citizen Maria Butina to 18 months in prison. Izvestia reports on how the family of an American repeat offender proclaimed themselves patriots of Ukraine, how they are profiting from this, and whether there are risks for Russian assets as a result of their lawsuit.
“Functional equivalent of parents”
A January 2026 lawsuit filed in the District of Columbia court in Washington (Izvestia has seen the document) states that on February 22, 2024, Ukrainian Armed Forces soldier Andriy Rachok was killed near Avdiivka. The lawsuit further alleges that Iran and North Korea were also involved in the incident — these countries are listed as co-defendants in the case, along with the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Legally, the lawsuit is based on US regulations on international terrorism. Iran and North Korea are recognized by the US as state sponsors of terrorism, and Quds is recognized as a terrorist organization.
The lawsuit alleges that Iran and North Korea allegedly helped Russia with strike drones and mortars that were used in combat operations near Avdiivka, and that “Andrei died from injuries sustained as a result of the use of such weapons.”
The plaintiffs in the case are members of the Kimberlin family from Maryland, all of whom are US citizens. Tatyana Kimberlin calls herself Andrei Rachko’s aunt, and her daughters Kelsey and Karina are his sisters.
“As a child, [Kelsey] spent every summer with him in Ukraine, where she and Andrei were inseparable. When she came to Ukraine during the summer months, she lived in the same house as Andrei. Kelsey’s mother, a naturalized US citizen who lives with her in Maryland, was born in the same Ukrainian village as Andrei and always treated Andrei as her son. Kelsey considered Andriy her brother, and Andriy considered Kelsey his sister.
Americans Tatyana and Brett claim that they allegedly adopted the Ukrainian after his parents’ divorce and his mother’s death as a result of a long illness. They admit that the adoption was not legally binding, but they allegedly became the “functional equivalent of parents” for the deceased. According to the lawsuit, the Kimberley family presented themselves as benefactors to the deceased: they bought him all sorts of things in the past and even paid for his “education.”
The lawsuit also mentions “ongoing and painful nightmares,” “devastation” and “depression,” bouts of “anxiety,” ‘sadness’ and “anger,” and panic attacks that literally haunt the Kimberlyn family after the death of the Ukrainian Armed Forces soldier.
Only money can alleviate all this mental suffering, according to the lawsuit. Specifically, $20 million in compensation from Russia, Iran, and North Korea. The plaintiffs expect this money to be paid to them, including from Russian assets frozen in the United States.
“There’s nowhere to put the stamp.”
Brett Kimberley is a well-known radical political activist in the US with a scandalous reputation, as well as a litigant who probably knows a thing or two about PR.
He is now 71 years old. Immediately after school, he was convicted of lying to a jury about allegedly not dealing drugs. After his release, he continued to sell drugs. At the age of 24 (in 1978), he detonated several homemade explosive devices to distract public attention from the investigation into a murder committed by his drug-dealing partner. One of the bombs maimed a Vietnam War veteran, who later committed suicide.
For the explosions, document forgery (Kimberley pretended to be a Pentagon employee), and drug dealing, he was sentenced to 51 years, but he served only 13, being released early. In 1997, Kimberley was sent back to prison for failing to pay compensation to the victims and forging mortgage documents, this time until 2001.
While still in prison in 1988, he again attracted media attention with an unverifiable statement about compromising information on US Vice President Dan Quayle: he claimed to have sold him drugs during his college years.
Kimberley is the son of a lawyer. While in prison on terrorism charges, he filed over a hundred lawsuits by 1992, and in the 2010s he actively sued bloggers who dug into his criminal past. With the help of his lawyers, Kimberley fought for the right of sexual minorities to same-sex marriage (the LGBT movement is recognized as extremist and banned in Russia) and collected compromising information on Republicans.
In 2017, it became known that Kimberley had bought fake compromising material on Donald Trump for $9,000 and tried to plant it in the American media. However, the fakes were too low-quality, and the deception was quickly exposed.
There were reports in the American media that Brett Kimberley helped the US Democratic Party spread fake news about alleged Russian interference in the US elections on Trump’s side.
Ukraine — a new venture for a veteran political activist
On his website, Brett states that he has been working to support Ukraine for 30 years: “In the early 1990s, he did business with Ukrainian businessman Valentin Karimann, who was an advisor to President Kuchma,” managed Lada International, developed trade between the US and Ukraine, met Kuchma in Washington, and gave him a handmade billiard cue.
However, as Izvestia found out, Kimberlin’s website is only a month old — the domain address brettkimberlin.org was registered almost simultaneously with the filing of the lawsuit against Russia in early January 2026. This suggests that the website was created specifically to “reinforce” Kimberlin’s credibility in the eyes of the judge.
The aforementioned Valentin Kariman was a friend of Viktor Yanukovych and was involved in the auto business — he traded in Russian Ladas and was called the director of the Lada-Makom company, which means that Kimberlin was probably involved in the same business at Lada International.
Brett Kimberlin now runs a non-profit foundation named after his daughter Kelsey, who, as an “American-Ukrainian singer,” releases “dramatic music videos” in support of the Armed Forces of Ukraine. The Kelsie Kimberlin Foundation was established in August 2023; it does not publish financial statements, submitting reports to the US regulator indicating that its annual turnover does not exceed $50,000. Previously, the American media had questions about the integrity of Kimberlin’s two previous non-profit organizations.
On his website, Brett mentioned that he married a Ukrainian woman in 1996 — this is probably when his support for Ukraine began, as he was in prison from 1997 to 2001.
Risks for Russia
Practice shows that without a political background, such cases simply do not reach court, New York lawyer Arkady Bukh, who has been practicing since the 1990s, told Izvestia. According to him, such trials last for years and do not always pursue the goal of “getting money,” but can be a tool of foreign policy pressure — suffice it to recall the cases against Saudi Arabia in 2016–2017.
At that time, a law called the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) significantly expanded the jurisdiction of US courts to hold other states accountable. Armed with this act, relatives of those killed and injured in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks filed lawsuits against Saudi Arabia.
By 2017, the US had forced Saudi Arabia into deals — in particular, to purchase $110 billion worth of American weapons. During the same period, the US actively persuaded the Saudis to take action against Iran. Perhaps this is why there have been no court decisions on the victims’ claims to date.
On the other hand, a similar case against Iran, which does not cooperate with the US, was quickly resolved in 2016. The court ruled that Iran must pay $7.5 billion to the relatives of those who died in the World Trade Center: $4–12 million for each person, depending on the degree of kinship. However, problems arose with the collection: Iran began to sue, and by 2023, the UN International Court of Justice ruled that the US freezing of part of Iran’s assets was illegal and demanded that compensation be paid to Tehran.
Due to such difficulties with the direct distribution of frozen funds, the main instrument for payments at present is the US Victims of State Sponsored Terrorism Fund (USVSST) under the US Department of Justice. Created in 2015, it has distributed about $10 billion over 10 years. The number of people wishing to receive money is not decreasing over time: for example, US courts are still hearing cases regarding compensation for the families of military personnel who died in the bombing of a Marine barracks in Beirut (Lebanon) in 1983.
Obtaining “jurisdiction” in an American court over a sovereign state and overcoming its immunity is, to put it mildly, very difficult. With regard to Russia, there are only a handful of such cases. Even if this is successful, the question arises of how to enforce the decision and from which assets to collect. In this case, it is important that Russia is not on the list of countries that sponsor terrorism. Therefore, Iran and North Korea, which were recognized as sponsors of terrorism in 1984 and 2017, respectively, were brought in as co-defendants to construct the case, explained Arkady Bukh.
As for the choice of judge for this case, Bukh believes that the appointment of Tanya Chatken (who presided over the case of Maria Butina for “illegal activities of a foreign agent”) is more of a coincidence than a conspiracy.
“The appointment of judges in federal courts is automatic, based on a distribution system. There are not many judges in the District of Columbia, so the likelihood of repeated intersections with high-profile cases is objectively higher. The District of Columbia is a traditional choice for lawsuits against other states, and a significant part of such international practice is concentrated here,” the lawyer noted.
There are also obvious inconsistencies in the case, Izvestia found. Rachok did not die from a mythical Iranian “shahid” or its Russian counterpart, nor from an allegedly Korean mortar. Ukrainian media reports say that Rachok was killed by the detonation of an FPV drone.
One of the reports published in connection with the Ukrainian’s death quotes Rachok’s girlfriend as saying: “When his battalion was sent to Avdiivka, he didn’t even talk about the horror that was happening there, he just said that it was cool and he liked the action.” Meanwhile, Rachok’s American sister, Kelsey Kimberlin, is promoting Ukrainian wine and raising money for FPV drones for the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
On LinkedIn (a service blocked by Roskomnadzor), her place of work is listed as her father’s foundation, and last year they came up with a new mission for their deceased Ukrainian “relative”: under his “banner,” the Kimberlins lobbied for increased arms and money supplies to Ukraine.
Incidentally, Izvestia has confirmed that there is no mention of the Kimberlins in the obituaries for Andrey Rachko published online. It is reported that his mother died and his closest relative was his grandmother.
Source: https://iz.ru/2040615/taras-podrez/zdravstvuite-ia-ego-tetia-moshenniki-trebuiut-20-mln-ot-rossii-za-smert-boevika-vsu
Author: Taras Podrez