A look at Russians who became mixed up in Trump probe

MOSCOW — An investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller into an elaborate Russian operation that sought to meddle in the 2016 U.S. presidential election and try to help Donald Trump win the White House has cast a spotlight on more than a dozen Russian nationals, including billionaires, an elusive linguist, an ambassador and a pop star. The indictment said he funded the Internet Research Agency, a “troll factory” in Russia’s St. Petersburg that used social media accounts to “sow discord in the U.S. political system.” But he also is the suspected mastermind of a company called Wagner that has been sending private military contractors to fight in Syria, Ukraine and African countries. Agalarov also said that he offered the future U.S. president a site for a Trump tower in Moscow, but “it didn’t come to signing any deals.” The Agalarovs maintained ties with Trump, and it was Emin who, through his British publicist, helped arrange a June 9, 2016, meeting at Trump Tower in New York with a Russian government-connected lawyer who was purported to have documents that could “incriminate” candidate Hillary Clinton in support of the Trump campaign. Deripaska and his companies were hit with crippling U.S. sanctions last year over Russia’s “malign activity” including Moscow’s seizure of Crimea from Ukraine.