Model offers info on Trump links to get out of jail
THAILAND: A self-described sex expert whose videos highlighted the ties between one of Russia’s richest men and the Kremlin has been jailed in Thailand and is calling for United States help, claiming she has information about links between Russia and US President Donald Trump.
Anastasia Vashukevich, an escort service worker from Belarus who catapulted to a certain measure of fame after filming a yacht trip with Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska and Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Prikhodko, was detained in Thailand last weekend in a police raid on her ‘‘sex training’’ seminar. While still in custody yesterday, she published Instagram videos asking US 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 to back up the claim that she had new information to offer related to the investigation into Russian election interference. A post to her Instagram account showed her sitting on the floor of what was described as a Thai jail and said she was sick.
‘‘I am the only witness and the missing link in the connection between Russia and the US elections – the long chain of Oleg Deripaska, Prikhodko, Manafort, and Trump,’’ Vashukevich said in a live Instagram video yesterday, apparently shot as she was being driven in an open-air police van through the Thai city of Pattaya. ‘‘In exchange for help from US 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.’’
Representatives for Vashukevich and Deripaska did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny made Vashukevich famous last month after he broadcast old footage from her Instagram account showing an August 2016 yacht trip with Deripaska and Prikhodko. Navalny used the footage to allege that Deripaska, a metals magnate, had bribed Prikhodko, one of Russia’s most influential government officials, with the luxury getaway accompanied by women from an escort service. Navalny also speculated that Deripaska and Prikhodko may have served as a link between the Kremlin and the Trump campaign in 2016, though Vashukevich’s videos offered no proof.
According to emails described to
last year, Manafort – who once worked for Deripaska – directed an associate to offer Deripaska ‘‘private briefings’’ about Trump’s presidential campaign. A Deripaska spokeswoman said he was never offered such briefings.
Prikhodko called Navalny a ‘‘political loser’’ whose investigation combined ‘‘the possible and the impossible.’’ Deripaska said Navalny’s ‘‘allegations have nothing to do with reality’’, and sued Vashukevich for violating his privacy. A court ordered Instagram to remove some of Vashukevich’s posts.
On Monday, according to Russian news reports, Thai police raided a sex seminar for Russian tourists in which Vashukevich was participating. Attendees had paid more than US$600 each for the five-day course, Russian media said.
Russian embassy consul Vladimir Sosnov said that Vashukevich and her companions would be put on trial and deported. But Vashukevich claimed yesterday that she had been arrested on orders of Russian officials, as payback for her video of Deripaska and Prikhodko.
Coincidentally or not, one of Russia’s most important security and intelligence officials was also in Thailand yesterday.
Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, former head of the Federal Security Service, held talks in Bangkok about the security of Russian tourists, RIA reported.