President Vladimir Putin has presented US President Donald Trump’s special envoy with an award to pass on to a senior CIA official whose son was killed fighting with Russia in Ukraine.
Putin gave the Order of Lenin to Steve Witkoff during his trip to Moscow this week to discuss a plan to end the Ukraine war, sources familiar with the matter told the BBC’s US partner CBS.
Michael Gloss, 21, who was killed in Ukraine last year, was the son of Juliane Gallina, who is the CIA’s deputy director for digital innovation.
Reports of the award emerged as it was confirmed that Trump and Putin will meet in Alaska next Friday to discuss the future of the war in Ukraine.
Neither the Kremlin nor Russian foreign ministry has publicly acknowledged posthumously bestowing the Order of Lenin, a Soviet-era award recognising outstanding civilian service, on Gloss.
It is unclear what was done with the award. The White House, the CIA and Witkoff did not respond to requests for comment.
Gloss’ death first emerged in Russian media reports in April.
A CIA statement later that month said Gloss had been suffering from mental health problems, adding that his death was not a national security issue.
Gloss was never an employee of the CIA, a person familiar with the matter told CBS.
Sources also told CBS that the Kremlin did not initially appear to be aware of the family background of Gloss, who enlisted with Russian forces in autumn 2023.
Gloss had shared selfies in Moscow’s Red Square on social media last year. His posts had expressed support for Russia in what he called “the Ukraine Proxy war” and dismissed media coverage of the conflict as “western propaganda”.
An obituary for Gloss published in November 2024 said he was “killed in Eastern Europe” on 4 April that year.
The CIA’s statement about his death four months ago said that Ms Gallina and her family had suffered “an unimaginable personal tragedy”.
Gloss’s father, Iraq war veteran Larry Gloss, told the Washington Post in an interview this April that their son had struggled for most of his life with mental illness.
“Our biggest fear while we were waiting for him to be repatriated was that someone over there [in Moscow] would put two and two together and figure out who his mother was, and use him as a prop,” Larry Gloss said.
