A multibillion-dollar project to tap into natural gas in Alaska pursued by the Trump administration has received secret funding from a sanctioned Russian company, according to a report. Polar LNG, an American energy startup, is seeking to buy Russian technology to extract natural gas from Alaska's North Slope and ship it to allies abroad, portraying the project as a decidedly American undertaking. But Joel Riddle, who resigned as the company's chief executive last month, told The New York Times that he was misled about the source of the company's funding. He said he had been made to believe that the money came from a firm in the United Arab Emirates, when at least some of it actually came from Novatek, one of Russia's biggest energy companies. Novatek is under partial U.S. sanctions.