Richard R. Burt (born February 3, 1947) is an American businessman and diplomat who served as United States Ambassador to Germany and was a chief negotiator of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty.

Prior to his diplomatic career, Burt worked as director of a non-governmental organization and from 1977 to 1980 was a national security correspondent for The New York Times.

Following this fellowship, Burt moved to London to work as a research associate and later Assistant Director of the International Institute of Strategic Studies.

[7] In 1989, President George H. W. Bush appointed Burt as chief negotiator for the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I) between the United States and the Soviet Union, with the rank of ambassador.

[8] While Deripaska was banned from entering the United States from 1998 to 2010,[10] he hired Diligence for corporate intelligence gathering, visa lobbying through its considerable GOP connections and, crucially, helping to obtain a $150 million World Bank/European Bank for Reconstruction and Development loan for the Komi Aluminum Project at Sosnogorsk, Komi Republic, a Deripaska subsidiary of Rusal.

[8] From the spring to October 2005, Diligence performed Project Yucca for BGR[a] in which the auditing firm KPMG was infiltrated by Diligence in order to obtain KPMG's audit of the Jeffrey Galmond and Leonid Reiman associated firm IPOC International Growth Fund for the benefit of Alfa Group's telecom subsidiary Altimo.

[29][30] During the first two quarters of 2016, McLarty Associates received $365,000 to lobby for New European Pipeline AG, a firm owned by Russian oil company Gazprom.

[6][d] Burt's simultaneous roles as a campaign adviser for Trump and a lobbyist for Russian interests first drew scrutiny in October 2016 following the release of the Steele dossier.