🇺🇸🇷🇺 Donald Trump Jr. and his wife have now acknowledged that a Russian oligarch with close ties to Vladimir Putin helped fund their lavish wedding celebrations in the Bahamas. According to reporting by ProPublica and AP, Umar Kremlev paid hundreds of thousands of dollars towards the event, including the rental of a private island and a major fireworks display. Trump Jr. and Bettina Anderson describe Kremlev as a “dear friend” and say his contribution was simply an extraordinarily generous wedding gift, with no political motive. (ProPublica) That is, to put it mildly, an unusual arrangement. Kremlev is not just any wealthy acquaintance. He heads the International Boxing Association, has received Russia’s Order of Friendship from Putin, and has operated within a sporting organisation heavily financed by Gazprom. ProPublica also reports that Kremlev attended the celebration with a sizeable Russian contingent. (ProPublica) The couple insists this was personal friendship, not politics. Perhaps. But when the son of the sitting U.S. president accepts a wedding gift worth hundreds of thousands of dollars from a Russian oligarch close to Putin, at a time when Washington is negotiating directly with Moscow over Ukraine, questions about influence are not somehow rendered illegitimate by calling the benefactor a “dear friend”. The issue is not whether Kremlev wrote “political motive” on the invoice. It is whether people with proximity to hostile foreign governments should be in a position to bestow extraordinarily valuable personal benefits on the family of the President of the United States and expect nobody to ask what they might hope to gain from that relationship. kyivindependent.com/donald-t…