The escort whose social media posts played a big role in Alexei Navalny's investigative video allegedly exposing Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska bribing a government official has been arrested in Thailand and is offering information in exchange for help gaining her freedom.
Navalny, Putin's top political opponent who has been banned from running against him in the upcoming election and who was arrested again last week, found video online shot by Nastya Rybka – whose real name is Anastasia Vashukevich – while she was on Deripaska's yacht with the billionaire and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Prikhodko in August 2016. Navalny, in a 25-minute YouTube video now viewed more than six million times, details how the video shows Deripaska breaking the law.
WaPo:
“An oligarch takes a top government official on a ride on his own yacht — that’s a bribe,” Navalny says in the video. “An oligarch pays for all of this, including young women from escort agencies. Believe it or not, this is also a bribe.”
Vashukevich, in an effort to get foreign help, now is going so far as to call herself the "missing link" that can connect Deripaska, Prikhodko, Paul Manafort, and President Trump, but has yet to provide any evidence this is true.
WaPo:
... Vashukevich ... was detained in Thailand over the weekend in a police raid on her “sex training” seminar. While still in custody on Tuesday, she published Instagram videos asking U.S. journalists and intelligence agencies to help her.
Deripaska, with whom Vashukevich said she had an affair, used to employ former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort. But Vashukevich, better known by the alias Nastya Rybka, provided no evidence on Tuesday to back up the claim that she had new information to offer related to the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 U.S. presidential election. A post to her Instagram account showed her sitting on the floor of what was described as a Thai jail cell and said she was sick.
“I am the only witness and the missing link in the connection between Russia and the U.S. elections — the long chain of Oleg Deripaska, Prikhodko, Manafort, and Trump,” Vashukevich said in a live Instagram video Tuesday, apparently shot as she was driven in an open-air police van through the Thai resort city of Pattaya. “In exchange for help from U.S. intelligence services and a guarantee of my safety, I am prepared to provide the necessary information to America or to Europe or to the country which can buy me out of Thai prison.”
Vashukevich said in her video that she had already given an interview to U.S. broadcaster NBC.
Russian news reports says Thai police arrested Vashukevich in a raid on an illegal sex seminar. Reuters says the seminar itself was not illegal, but the 10 Russian nationals are being charged with "working in Thailand without permission."
Vashukevich claims her arrest is payback for the Navalny video.
WaPo:
“Please USA save us from Russia!” said a post in English on her Instagram account. “All this cases are political repressions!”
Coincidentally or not, one of Russia’s most important security and intelligence officials was also in Thailand on Tuesday. Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, former head of the Federal Security Service, held talks Tuesday in Bangkok on the security of Russian tourists, RIA Novosti reported.
Thailand arrests 10 Russians who ran sex training course in Pattaya (Reuters)