Trump Jr. Spent Two Days Hunting in Mongolia With the Putin-Linked Oligarch Who Paid for Part of His Wedding - and the US Embassy Paid $18,715 for His Security Detail's Hotels

In late August, Donald Trump Jr., the US president's son, landed in Ulaanbaatar and then travelled several hundred kilometres to a hunting camp in western Mongolia. There he spent two days in the company of Russian oligarch Umar Kremlev, a close associate of Vladimir Putin, plus a handful of guides, drivers and cooks. This was revealed by the Financial Times, based on statements from local guides and officials, flight data, social media posts and publicly available documents.

While the president's son was hunting, the US embassy in Ulaanbaatar paid $18,715 from its budget for hotel rooms for the Secret Service agents protecting him, from 23 August to 6 September. As a member of the president's immediate family, Trump Jr. travels with permanent protection - at the state's expense.

Who is Kremlev

Kremlev (43) was born in Tajikistan as Umar Lutfuloev and changed his surname in 2010. Before that, Russian courts convicted him in 2004 of extortion and in 2007 of physical assault. Shortly after changing his identity, he joined the notorious "Night Wolves" biker gang, where he grew close to Alexei Rubezhnoy, the man who now heads Putin's personal presidential security service.

That connection opened the doors to boxing and high politics. In 2020 he became president of the International Boxing Association (IBA), which promptly received money from Russian state giant Gazprom, and Putin personally awarded him the Order of Friendship. Last year Kremlev also took over Rolf, Russia's largest chain of car dealerships, under a decree in which Putin released the company from state ownership.

On 27 August, Kremlev left an IBA press conference in Kazakhstan and took an overnight charter flight to Ulaanbaatar, and from there went straight to the president's son's camp. He was accompanied by Russian businessman Artur Martirosov, a partner in the "Voskhod" venture capital fund, which is under US sanctions. One participant said that Trump Jr. and Kremlev took care not to be photographed together at the camp.

Trump Jr. stayed in Mongolia for another week and kept hunting in Bayan-Ölgii province. According to one of the guides, he shot an Altai argali, a wild sheep from an endangered species. According to Financial Times data, he has killed at least two more such sheep in Mongolia since 2019. At the end he also met Mongolian President Ukhnaagiin Khürelsükh, a meeting his spokesman described as unofficial, with talks mostly about outdoor activities.

"A personal friend"

The hunt came shortly after Trump Jr.'s wedding in May on private islands in the Caribbean. The investigative outlet ProPublica had previously reported that Kremlev covered part of the cost of the celebration, including the rental of one of the islands and the fireworks. Trump Jr.'s representative described Kremlev as "a personal friend", connected to him through boxing and the outdoors, not business.

Former senior CIA official Dan Hoffman sees a serious security risk: "It is almost impossible for Kremlev to have any contact with the Trump family without the Russian services knowing about it in advance." An oligarch paying for wedding fireworks, a hunting camp far from the cameras and American taxpayers footing the security detail's hotel bill. If this had happened with the son of a Balkan prime minister, how fast would an investigation have been opened?