Donald Trump Jr. reportedly spent part of an August Mongolia hunting trip with Umar Kremlev, the Putin-linked Russian businessman who previously helped fund his wedding celebrations. During the trip, Trump Jr. killed an endangered Altai argali sheep.
Donald Trump Jr.’s relationship with Russian boxing powerbroker Umar Kremlev has officially moved beyond wedding gifts and into the mountains of Mongolia. New reporting says the two men spent part of an August hunting trip together, where Trump Jr. killed an endangered Altai argali sheep.
The Financial Times says guides, local officials, flight records and social-media posts helped reconstruct the trip. Kremlev joined Trump Jr.’s hunting camp in western Mongolia for roughly two days before leaving, while Trump Jr. stayed longer for additional hunting.
That would already be an unusual political-family story on its own. It gets much stranger because Kremlev is the same Russian businessman who helped pay hundreds of thousands of dollars toward celebrations surrounding Trump Jr.’s May wedding in the Bahamas.
ProPublica previously reported that Kremlev covered major costs connected to two nights of the wedding weekend, including a private-island rental and a fireworks display. Trump Jr. and his wife later confirmed that Kremlev had hosted the celebrations as what they called an extraordinarily generous gift from a friend.
Kremlev later said Trump Jr. paid him back, and President Trump publicly defended the original arrangement as permissible. Trump Jr.’s spokesperson has consistently described Kremlev as a personal friend rather than a business associate.
Now that personal friendship apparently includes remote hunting trips. A spokesperson for Trump Jr. told the Financial Times that the two men bonded over hunting, fishing and the outdoors and said there is no business relationship between them.
The hunt itself is also attracting scrutiny because the animal Trump Jr. killed was an Altai argali, a massive mountain sheep whose curling horns make it highly prized by trophy hunters. The species is endangered, although Mongolia allows limited hunting under a permit system.
This is not Trump Jr.’s first Mongolia argali controversy. He previously hunted the species there in 2019, when reporting raised questions about a permit issued after the animal had already been killed.
The 2026 trip came with an even more politically charged companion. Kremlev has close ties to Vladimir Putin’s circle and leads the International Boxing Association, a sports organization that has received financing from Russian state energy giant Gazprom.
Former U.S. counterintelligence officials quoted by the Financial Times said relationships between politically connected Americans and people close to the Russian state can create obvious intelligence risks. That does not mean the hunt was an espionage operation, and the reporting does not establish that Trump Jr. or Kremlev discussed government business.
Still, the optics require almost no assistance from a headline writer. A Russian businessman helps bankroll wedding parties, gets repaid after the arrangement becomes public, and then turns up months later in Mongolia hunting with the president’s son.
There is also something very 2026 about how quickly “we are just friends who enjoy the outdoors” became a sentence attached to private islands, fireworks, Russian power networks and an endangered sheep. Most friendships manage to stay out of congressional oversight letters without even trying.
Trump Jr.’s team says the relationship is personal, not commercial or political. The new reporting does not prove otherwise, but it does make the friendship a lot harder to describe as a one-off wedding favor.
At minimum, the Mongolia trip adds another chapter to a relationship that was already under scrutiny. Kremlev was the wedding benefactor, then the hunting companion, and the endangered argali is now the latest animal dragged into a political story it almost certainly did not ask to join.
Sources
- Financial Times – Inside Donald Trump Jr.’s Mongolian hunting trip with Umar Kremlev
- Forbes – Trump Jr. reportedly hunted endangered sheep with Kremlev
- ProPublica – Kremlev helped fund Trump Jr.’s Bahamas wedding celebrations
- Associated Press – Kremlev says Trump Jr. repaid wedding celebration expenses
