Donald Jr.’s hunting trip to Mongolia with the oligarch who paid for part of his wedding

Donald Jr., the son of U.S. President Donald Trump, is once again in the news due to his personal relationship with Umar Kremlev, a Russian oligarch close to Vladimir Putin, who had previously paid for part of his wedding party in the Bahamas in May with Bettina Anderson. On that occasion, Kremlev had hired one of the private islands where the party took place – where a reception was held and some guests stayed overnight – and also paid for the fireworks. The story emerged last month following an investigation by ProPublica, prompting the U.S. president to state that his son had repaid the money to the oligarch. Kremlev did not attend the wedding, which was attended by just eighteen guests, but was present alongside other Russians at the post-wedding party. In the days leading up to the wedding celebrations that he helped to fund, Kremlev was in China on a state visit as part of a delegation accompanying Russian President Putin; the month before, Putin himself had awarded him the Order of Friendship, a Russian state honour.

In August, a Financial Times exclusive revealed that Donald Jr. had met up with Kremlev again: he spent two days on a hunting trip with him in Mongolia. The president’s son landed in Ulan Bator, the Mongolian capital, and from there travelled hundreds of kilometres to reach the province of Uvs, in the western part of the country. There he set up camp with a small number of hunting guides, drivers and cooks. Accompanying him was Kevin Small, a long-standing Republican donor who had previously taken part in hunting trips with the president’s son, and a number of people who had won the trip at a charity auction. Kremlev joined them on 27 August, after attending a conference in Kazakhstan, accompanied by Arthur Martirosov, a Russian businessman and partner at Voshkod, a venture capital fund subject to US sanctions. The oligarch stayed for two days and was cautious about being photographed alongside the Trump scion: he posted several videos of the hunting trip on Telegram, none of which featured the latter. After Kremlev left, the president’s son continued hunting for a week; on his return to Ulaanbaatar, he met with the President of Mongolia, Ukhnaagiin Khurelsukh, and the two are said to have discussed relations between their countries during a meeting described as informal.

Donald Jr.’s spokesperson stated that “Don has repeatedly made it clear that his relationship with Umar is a personal friendship, not a business one, based on a shared passion for hunting and fishing. It should therefore come as no surprise to anyone that they went hunting together”. However, as Holden Triplett, former director of counter-intelligence at the US National Security Council during Trump’s first term, told the Financial Times, “the moment the Russian security services discover that someone has a relationship with a high-profile figure, they try to exploit it”. The first public meeting between Kremlev and Trump’s son took place at an event organised by the International Boxing Association (IBA) – an organisation ravaged by scandals and allegations of corruption, of which the oligarch is president – in Istanbul in 2025: there, Donald Jr. described Kremlev as “not just a leader, but a friend”.

Born Umar Lutfulloyev, the oligarch was convicted as a young man of extortion and assault. In 2010, he changed his Tajik surname to the more Russian-sounding Kremlev, which means ‘of the Kremlin’, and joined a biker gang backed by the Russian government, the Night Wolves: this brought him into contact with Alexei Rubezhnoi, who is now head of Putin’s security service. Having become a boxing promoter, he rose to become head of the Russian Boxing Federation in 2017 and, in 2020, became president of the IBA, bringing with him substantial sponsorship from the Russian state-owned gas giant Gazprom. Kremlev is also involved in an organisation called Healthy Fatherland, run by his wife’s twin sister. The association, which promotes healthy eating and sport among young people, is subject to sanctions by the Ukrainian government for its alleged role in the programme to abduct Ukrainian children from the occupied territories and transfer them elsewhere under the pretext of ‘rehabilitation’. The Ukrainian government has also imposed sanctions on Kremlev himself, citing his close ties to Putin and the Russian secret services.