A 27-year-old Belarusian escort detained in Thailand continues to offer Russia investigation-related information in exchange for the United States' help in getting her to safety.
Anastasia Vashukevich, whose online name is Nastya Rybka, is in a detention center in Bangkok. Her "seduction coach," Alexander Kirillov, also is detained, and the pair is trying to negotiate their release together.
Their claim — that they are targets of a covert Russian operation to silence them because they know too much — might seem outlandish, but their case certainly includes some unusual circumstances.
They have influential enemies in Russia. They were arrested with the help of a “foreign spy,” according to the Thai police, and locked up on what is a fairly minor offense: working without a permit. And the F.B.I. says it tried to talk to the pair, suggesting that American investigators had not dismissed their account out of hand.
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The escort and her seduction coach have been held largely incommunicado since March 5, when reporters for The Times and other news media outlets were kicked out of the detention center for speaking to them. They now face deportation and fear what might happen to them if they are sent home to Russia, where they live, or Belarus, the former Soviet republic where they grew up, which remains firmly within Russia’s influence.
Vashukevich claimed to be 19-years-old and posted video and pictures online of the time she spent on a yacht with Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska in 2016. Deripaska has close ties to both Vladimir Putin and former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
She said she followed Mr. Kirillov’s instruction to record all her interactions with her target, the yacht’s owner, who turned out to be Mr. Deripaska.
Ms. Vashukevich told The Times in a brief interview last month at the detention center that she had more than 16 hours of recordings from the yacht, including conversations with three visitors who she believes were Americans.
She has called herself the “missing link” in the Russia investigation.
Putin opponent Alexei Navalny highlighted Vashukevich's social media postings as part of an investigation into Deripaska and government corruption.
The evidence included photos [Vashukevich] posted of the tycoon and his guest, Sergei E. Prikhodko, a deputy prime minister, and a recording of them talking about relations between the United States and Russia.
How and why Vashukevich and Kirillov ended up detained in Thailand is suspicious.
The two were arrested along with eight others on Feb. 25 when dozens of plainclothes police officers raided a workshop they were conducting for Russian tourists at a hotel in Pattaya, about 70 miles south of Bangkok.
The seminar was aimed mainly at male Russian tourists and offered instruction in how to seduce women. It was not illegal.
The police arrest report says that a “foreign spy” infiltrated the Russian-language seminar and provided the Royal Thai Police with information about the training.
Cellphone messages exchanged by the police show that the agent signaled the waiting officers when to raid the Ibis Pattaya Hotel conference room.
The work permit charge is relatively minor, and Mr. Kirillov had been conducting training sessions in Pattaya for years. But high-level officials appeared to take an unusual interest in this case: Six police generals and two colonels had responsibility for the raid, according to the arrest report.
Since the arrests, the government has tried to keep a tight lid on information. Friends said they had not been allowed to visit Ms. Vashukevich and Mr. Kirillov for weeks.
A law enforcement official said the F.B.I. tried to speak with the two but was not successful.
The NYT says Kirillov was concerned for his safety before traveling to Thailand and told a childhood friend to contact the FBI in case of trouble.
[Eliot] Cooper, who lives in Canada, said in a telephone interview that he called an F.B.I. hotline in February and proposed trading the recordings for the pair’s safety.
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He said he had told the hotline agent about one recorded conversation in which Mr. Deripaska and Mr. Prikhodko discussed wanting Mr. Trump to win.
“I explained all of that to the F.B.I.,” he said. “They should have a transcript of everything and a recording of my voice.”
Mr. Cooper said he had never heard back from the agency. The F.B.I. declined to comment.
Mr. Cooper said that Mr. Kirillov had hidden copies and instructed associates to release them if he or Ms. Vashukevich were killed or went missing.
“There is no investigation,” Mr. Cooper said. “The Americans are not interested. They want them to disappear, and Nastya in particular, because she is a living witness.”
From Thai Jail, Sex Coaches Say They Want to Trade U.S.-Russia Secrets for Safety (NYT)