Donald Trump visited Moscow in July 1987 at the invitation of the Soviet Ambassador.

Here we see 41-year-old Donald Trump in Moscow, July 1987, visiting at the invitation of the Soviet Ambassador. On the surface, it appeared to be just another business trip—but was there more beneath the surface?

According to former KGB officials, including Yuri Shvets, this visit may have been part of a broader Soviet effort to groom Trump as a potential asset.

 Donald J. Trump purchased full-page advertisements in three of the nation’s leading newspapers.

Just two months after his return to New York, Trump spent nearly $100,000 on full-page ads in major U.S. newspapers, the New York Times, Washington Post, and the Boston Globe calling for America to step back from its global alliances and let its allies defend themselves.

Sound familiar?

“There’s nothing wrong with America’s Foreign Defense Policy that a little backbone can’t cure,” the ad’s headline blares. Below, the reader finds “an open letter from Donald J. Trump” — addressed “To The American People” — “on why America should stop paying to defend countries that can afford to defend themselves.”

“Let’s not let our great country be laughed at any more,” Trump’s letter concludes.

The ads were published on September 2, 1987. According to an Associated Press report released the night before, Donald Trump paid $94,801 to place them.

At the time, the ads fueled speculation that Trump was considering a run against George H.W. Bush for the Republican presidential nomination. That same day, a separate article in The New York Times noted that Trump had planned a trip to New Hampshire – a key early primary state.

In the end, Trump chose not to enter the 1988 race, marking the conclusion of his first public flirtation with a presidential campaign.

That time a Russian billionaire bought a mansion from Trump for $95 million.

The Trump Organization began selling a number of properties to anonymous shell companies – many of which were later connected to Russian oligarchs.

In a 2004 auction, Trump acquired the property from Gosman’s Chapter 7 bankruptcy estate for $41 million, according to property records. Just four years later in 2008, Trump sold his Palm Beach mansion, Maison de L’Amitié, to Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev for $95 million—almost twice its estimated market value.

Carol Digges, the South Florida broker who showed the lavish estate to Dmitry Rybolovlev two years before he purchased it, said the Russian billionaire never actually moved in. In fact, she’s doubtful he ever intended to. “He bought it and never lived in it,” she noted.

The official deed lists Trump Properties as selling the estate to County Road Property LLC—but that was merely a front. The true buyer behind the deal was Russian billionaire Dmitry Rybolovlev.

Rybolovlev is a Russian oligarch who made his fortune by holding a significant stake in the fertilizer giant Uralkali shortly after the Soviet Union collapsed.

Meanwhile, it’s evident that Trump is growing increasingly irritated by ongoing questions about his ties to Russians.

“That was a number of years ago,” Trump said at the press conference, talking about the deal with Rybolovlev. “I guess probably I sell condos to Russians, okay?”