1987 | Trump visits Moscow and tours various sites in an effort to strike real estate deals in Soviet-era Russia. He stays in a hotel overlooking the Kremlin, and tells Playboy that Russian jets escorted his own on the way to the airport. Read more

1996 | Trump says he will hold a press conference with a Miami-based tobacco company in Moscow announcing plans to build an office and apartment complex similar to Trump Tower in New York. Read more

2005 | Trump gave the development company Bayrock a one-year deal to find a site for a Trump Tower. Felix Sater later testified that he identified a former pencil factory as a site for the project, before the deal fell apart. Read more

Nov. 9, 2013 | While in Moscow for his Miss Universe competition, Trump meets with Russian businessmen, including real estate developer Aras Agalarov, an ally of Russian president Vladimir Putin. Before the pageant, Trump said to MSNBC, “I do have a relationship” with Putin. Read more

May 2014 | Trump tells a group at the National Press Club that while he was in Moscow, he spoke with Putin “indirectly and directly.”

July 2015 | At a town hall in Las Vegas, Trump tells an audience that he knew Putin. “I don’t think you’d need the sanctions. I think that we would get along very, very well,” he said. Read more

September 2015 | Putin and Trump are on the season premiere of “60 Minutes.” Although Trump would later say in a debate, “I got to know him very well because we were both on ’60 Minutes.’ We were stablemates,” Time magazine revealed that they were interviewed in separate cities. Read more

December 2015 | Putin says Trump is “colorful” and “talented.” Trump calls the compliment an “honor.” Even as ties to Russia become a campaign issue in 2016, Trump refuses to renounce Putin: “A guy calls me a genius, and I’m going to renounce? I’m not going to renounce him.” (Putin has not publicly called Trump a genius.) Read more

April 2016 | Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak attends a speech in Washington in which Trump vows to seek better relations with Russia. The president of the think tank that invited Kislyak said he introduced the two in a receiving line. Read more

July 2016 | In news conferences and tweets, Trump says he has “nothing to do with Russia,” and “I don’t know who Putin is. … I’ve never spoken to him.” He also tweeted, “For the record, I have ZERO investments in Russia.” Trump has not released his tax returns, so that can’t be verified. At the same time, at a news conference, Trump encouraged the Russians to hack Hillary Clinton’s email. Read more

Nov. 10, 2016 | Two days after the election, a Russian official tells a reporter in Moscow that the Kremlin had been in contact with Trump’s campaign. Trump spokesperson Hope Hicks denies it, saying, “There was no communication between the campaign and any foreign entity during the campaign.” Read more

Jan. 20, 2017 | Donald Trump is sworn in as the 45th president of the United States. He designates the day as “National Day of Patriotic Devotion.” Read more

Jan. 28, 2017 | President Trump and Putin speak on the phone for an hour. Read more

March 2017 | One of Trump’s personal lawyers, Marc E. Kasowitz, is named to the legal team defending Russia’s largest state-run bank in a corporate-raiding case, BuzzFeed reports. Read more