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Illustrative: US President Donald Trump, left, and Russian President Vladimir Putin arrive for a meeting in Helsinki, Finland, on July 16, 2018. (Brendan Smialowski/AFP)
Former US president Donald Trump was nurtured as a Russian asset for decades, starting in 1980, a new book claims, with Moscow actively encouraging the businessman to enter politics many years before he won the presidency and supporting him through numerous failed business ventures as it built a “deep” relationship with the mogul.
“He was an asset,” former KGB spy Yuri Shvets, who worked for the KGB in Washington DC for years in the 1980s, told journalist Craig Unger in the new book American Kompromat.
AP
Donald Trump with daughter Ivanka at a Harley Davidson Cafe Event, New York City on 9 October 1993
Rex Features
New arival
Marla and Donald Trump leave St. Mary s Hospital in West Palm Beach, Florida with their newborn baby girl, Tiffany on 14 October 1993
AP
Behind the lens
Donald Trump takes a picture of Bridget Marks in 1993 after interviewing her for Playboy magazine s 40th anniversary playmate in New York
AFP/Getty Images
Top Trump
New York real estate giant Donald Trump poses in his Trump Tower office on a giant letter T on 08 May 1996
AFP/Getty Images
New love interest
Donald Trump and Melania arrive for VH1 s Divas Live concert at the Beacon Theater in New York City on 13 April 1999