And there’s also Boris Epshteyn, a Trump surrogate who frequently appears on television and describes himself as a senior adviser to the campaign. The Russia-born investment banker and attorney moderated a panel at an October 2013 conference in New York City called “Invest in Moscow!” The panel was mainly comprised of Moscow city government officials, like Sergey Cheremin, a city minister who heads Moscow’s foreign economic and international relations department.

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“In Russia, where business and the state are so closely linked, business dealings automatically imply ties to people high up in government as well,” said Kathryn Stoner, an expert in U.S.-Russia relations at Stanford University.

In keeping with that pattern, Epshteyn has adopted some of the Russian government’s narrative about its annexation of Crimea, Ukraine’s southern peninsula, in 2014. The international community does not recognize Crimea as part of Russia, given the illegal nature of its acquisition of the territory.