Wendy Deng (then the wife of Rupert Murdoch) introduced them.
the former wife of Rupert Murdoch, who had introduced Dasha Zhukova to Ivanka years earlier and whose social and investment networks tied Russian oligarchs together with Silicon Valley capital, and Western media elites. Deng, Zhukova, and the Kushner brothers had previously co-invested in Artsy, an online art platform backed by Jared’s brother, Joshua Kushner, and in which Jared Kushner also held a stake before entering the White House.
From:
35. Midnight in Moscow: The Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Edition (2014) Substack
Trip to Russia: In 2014, Dasha and her then-husband Roman Abramovich invited Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner to Russia for a four-day visit. During this trip, they attended a fundraising dinner for Moscow’s Jewish Museum
This marks the beginning of their friendship, which has been noted for its duration and significance in social circles. Business Insider
BFFs: Ivanka Trump and Dasha Zhukova at the 2016 US Open.Photographer: Jewel Samad/AFP via Getty Images
Their meeting was months after Donald Trump staged the Miss Universe pageant in Moscow.
When Donald Trump brought Miss Universe to Moscow
How a 2013 beauty pageant explains Trump’s love for Russia and obsession with Vladimir Putin.
Donald Trump and Miss Universe 2012 Olivia Culpo show off on the red carpet at the 2013 Miss Universe Pageant in Moscow. | Victor Boyko/Getty Images
Abramovich, Bloomberg reported, was one of Putin’s most trusted associates, and the owner of Russia’s second largest steel company, plus the Chelsea football club. As I wrote in my post about Trump’s Miss Universe pageant in Moscow, that 2013 outing successfully embedded the Trump family inside a Kremlin-adjacent network that was built around Russian oligarch Aras Agalarov, and his son, Emin.
These meetings were important not because anything illegal took place or even that money was changing hands. Instead, the ties between Trump and Russia, which had been a series erratic and fitful contacts that took place over more than thirty years, were solidifying into cohesive relationships. Ivanka’s and Jared’s trip in 2014 attracted little attention in the United States, but it further strengthened those relationships and put the entire Trump family directly inside the same Kremlin network that had hosted him only a few months earlier, and that later became the target of investigations into Russia’s attack on the 2016 election.
From:
35. Midnight in Moscow: The Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Edition (2014) Substack
Dasha Zhukova:
How NYC socialite Dasha Zhukova lived large with oligarch Roman Abramovich
Art-world power player and celebrity pal Dasha Zhukova was married to sanctioned oligarch Roman Abramovich (with her, right) and apparently still has ties to him — creating a potentially uncomfortable situation for her.
NY Post photo composite
Two days after Vladimir Putin’s forces marched into Ukraine last month, New York art collector Dasha Zhukova postponed all of the exhibits at the Garage, her contemporary museum in Moscow, to protest “the brutal and horrific invasion.”
But while Zhukova, 40, has been emphatic in her condemnation of Russian aggression, she has remained silent about her ex-husband and the father of two of her three children, billionaire Roman Abramovich.
See more from Chris Ungar, here is another extract:
One reason the 2014 visit was so significant was that it took place just weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine and illegally annexed Crimea. In other words, the Trump family disregarded the growing risk of sanctions and continued to engage with the Kremlin’s oligarchs as they continued to pursue a real estate project that depended on Putin’s approval.
The February 2014 visit also placed Jared Kushner within oligarch networks that later intersected directly with U.S. politics. Viktor Vekselberg, who chaired the fundraiser, later drew FBI scrutiny during and after the 2016 election when investigators examined whether his companies and his associates played roles in Russian political influence operations to help Trump win.
Kushner’s presence during the Moscow trip was particularly significant, as he later established contact during Trump’s first term with Ambassador Sergey Kislyak and with Sergey Gorkov, the head of the Russian state-owned development bank VEB. He also tried to establish a private backchannel between the Trump transition team and the Kremlin to avoid detection by U.S. intelligence.
Retired, living in the Scottish Borders after living most of my life in cities in England. I can now indulge my interest in all aspects of living close to nature in a wild landscape. I live on what was once the Iapetus Ocean which took millions of years to travel from the Southern Hemisphere to here in the Northern Hemisphere. That set me thinking and questioning and seeking answers.
In 1998 I co-wrote Millennium Countdown (US)/ A Business Guide to the Year 2000 (UK) see https://www.abebooks.co.uk/products/isbn/9780749427917
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