The new Russian hottie making her way through DC's think tank circuit
Is Nomma Zarubina the new Mariia Butina?
Welcome to so many new followers! I’m excited you are here, and I hope you will find my Rants useful. Be sure, too, to check out my Foreign Influence Operations course, which is (unfortunately) incredibly relevant to, you know, all this [I say as I gesture frantically at the chaos around us].
A friendly reminder that Rant! is a reader-supported publication. Thank you for making this newsletter possible!
ALEX’S WEEKLY RANT
We’ve been talking a lot lately about Russian sabotage operations in the West (see my past Rants here, here, and here for just a few examples).
But don’t forget about all those influence operations! They, too, are part of Russia’s war with us, even if we continuously fail to recognize it.
This week brought news that (yet another) individual has been arrested by the FBI for supporting Russian intelligence in their influence operations. Nomma Zarubina is a Russian national who was working for the Washington, DC-based think tank the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). For those of you not wonky enough to be familiar with DC think tank reputations, bless you; I wish I were still one of you. But I’m not, so I will tell you that CSIS is one of the biggies. It is highly regarded and has been home to such thinkers as Madeleine Albright and Zbigniew Brzezninski, who, I think it is fair to say, had to deal rather a lot in their day with the Russian menace.
Zarubina was allegedly recruited in 2020 by the FSB (Russia’s domestic spy service), which gave her the codename Alyssa. Her task was to network in policymaking and influential circles in the United States, including among journalists, experts, and Russian opposition supporters. The likely purpose for this was to report back to Moscow who was influential in these circles (spot and assess) and to help seed narratives among them to influence policy discourse (a tactic we’ve seen repeatedly here at Rant! and in the Foreign Influence Operations course).
Oh, she’s also a hottie.
US authorities claim Zarubina’s mentor is Elena Chernykh Branson, an American-Russian dual national who fled to Russia in 2020, after the FBI raided her Manhattan apartment. Branson, before she ran to Russia, ran the Russian Community Council of the USA, which claims to be a cultural organization preserving Russian culture and language. The center was used (allegedly) as cover for Russian influence and propaganda purposes. (For more on cultural organizations being used as cover for Russian intelligence operations, see Class 7, Class 8, and Class 18.)
After Branson, the mentor, fled to Russia, she was interviewed by Russian-state media outlet RT about her harrowing experience having her apartment searched by the FBI.
Her interviewer?
Mariia Butina, the red-headed hottie who, like Zarubina (the mentee), circulated amongst the DC crowd before being arrested for being a Russian spy. For more on Butina, see Class 9.
By the by, Branson donated to the presidential campaign of Tulsi Gabbard (probably just a coincidence!), who Trump has nominated to be Director of National Intelligence. (See this Rant! for more on why Gabbard is an agent of influence.)
My goodness, so many links to related stories. You’d almost think all these people’s actions were connected and coordinated or something.
Back to Zarubina, the mentee and most recent to be arrested. She had been interviewed by the FBI multiple times, always denying she had a relationship with Russian intelligence services. Eventually, it became clear she did indeed have a relationship with Russian intelligence, and the FBI arrested her for lying to them.
Interestingly, Zarubina told The Insider, which did a great deep dive into her social media and managed to actually interview her, she had long-standing contacts among members of the “U.S. counterintelligence headquarters,” with whom she'd shared classified information.
What does this mean? Was she an informant for the FBI before the FBI realized she was lying to them? If so, what was she informing the FBI about? I ask because we know another Russian FBI informant, Alexander Smirnov, was feeding the FBI disinformation about the Biden family on behalf of Russian intelligence. Was Zarubina playing a similar role?
Zarubina maintains her innocence and is out on $25,000 bail, having forfeited her passport. She is not allowed contact with any foreign government officials except from the Russian consulate. Of course, that hardly limits her comms back to her handlers. As I wrote years ago when Butina was in prison, she got lots of visits from the Consulate, way more than any other Russian prisoner in the US.
THE WEEK’S LINKS
A roundup of things you should be reading
HUNGARY SPYING
Hungarian CIA reportedly spied on EU officials (Politico)
MORE RUSSIAN ELECTION INTERFERENCE
Romania faced ‘aggressive Russian hybrid attacks’ during election, authorities say (TVPWorld)
RUSSIAN SABOTAGE
Russian Cargo Ship’s Crew Fired Signal Flares Toward German Helicopter (The Moscow Times)
The GRU Vandals: Moscow’s hired thugs are causing mayhem in Estonia (The Insider)
Alex Finley is a former officer of the CIA’s Directorate of Operations, where she served in West Africa and Europe. She writes and teaches about terrorism, disinformation / covert influence, and oligarch yachts. Her writing has appeared in Slate, Reductress, Funny or Die, POLITICO, The Center for Public Integrity, and other publications. She has spoken to the BBC, MSNBC, CNN, C-SPAN’s Washington Journal, France24, and numerous other media outlets. She was also invited once to speak at Harvard, which she now tells everyone within the first ten seconds of meeting them. She is the author of the Victor Caro series, satirical novels about the CIA. Before joining the CIA, Alex was a journalist, covering Capitol Hill, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. She reported on issues related to national security, intelligence, and homeland security. Did she mention she was invited to speak at Harvard?
So Ms Zarubina's out on a paltry $25 grand bail? Wot?! For lying to the FBI about national security issues and potential spying? I despair ....
Wasn’t Elizaveta Zarubina a Russian spy who infiltrated the Manhattan Project? I wonder if there’s a relation. Or was it a huge troll, if that was her cover name?