Russian social media executive sought to help Trump campaign in 2016, emails show

The following article by Rosalind S. Helderman, Anton Troianovski and Tom Hamburger was posted on the Washington Post website December 7, 2017:

Russian social media site VK is seen on a smartphone screen. (Natalia Seliverstova/Sputnik/Associated Press)

An executive at a leading Russian social media company made several overtures to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign in 2016 — including days before the November election — urging the candidate to create a page on the website to appeal to Russian Americans and Russians.

The executive at Vkontakte, or VK, Russia’s equivalent to Facebook, emailed Donald Trump Jr. and social media director Dan Scavino in January and again in November of last year, offering to help promote Trump’s campaign to its nearly 100 million users, according to people familiar with the messages.

“It will be the top news in Russia,” Konstantin Sidorkov, who serves as VK’s director of partnership marketing, wrote on Nov. 5, 2016. Continue reading “Russian social media executive sought to help Trump campaign in 2016, emails show”