Trump Envoy to Share Stage With Sanctioned Tycoon at Putin Forum
Trump Envoy to Share Stage With Sanctioned Tycoon at Putin Forum
By Jake Rudnitsky , Ilya Arkhipov , and Andrey Biryukov
May 10, 2018 4:31 PM EDT Updated on May 11, 2018 10:34 AM EDT
U.S. ambassador scheduled to appear with Vekselberg May 25
In shift, diplomat promotes Petersburg forum to U.S. firms
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-05-10/putin-s-economic-forum-gets-boost-from-trump-s-man-in-moscow
The U.S. ambassador to Moscow, pushing to build business ties with Russia, is scheduled to join a panel discussion this month at the Kremlin’s premier economic forum with Viktor Vekselberg, an oligarch slapped with American sanctions and linked to payments to Donald Trump’s lawyer.
Jon Huntsman, appointed by Trump last year, has been encouraging American business leaders to attend the St. Petersburg forum for the first time since the Ukraine crisis, even as political tensions between the Cold War rivals continue to rise. The U.S. government had in past years actively lobbied executives to steer clear of President Vladimir Putin’s main annual pitch for foreign investors after Russia annexed the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea in 2014.
“We have a lot of American businesses who are going to be there,” Huntsman said in a video posted Thursday on the embassy’s Twitter account. “It’s a very important time to talk about the future economic relationship between the United States and Russia.”
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