While doing some research on one of the ladies who rushed into our Moscow HQ last September and tried to disturb our work, we noticed something very interesting on her Instagram page: photos and videos with the famous Russian oligarch Oleg Deripaska. Apparently, this lady (who calls herself Nastya Rybka) was his escort during one of his yacht trips in 2016. Upon further research, we found a very strange video of hers. On it, Deripaska is talking (seemingly) to her about relations with America, Victoria Nuland (Assistant Secretary for European and Eurasian affairs at the US Department of State) and someone named “Sergey Eduardovich”, who is friends with Nuland. This made no sense to us at first: why would an oligarch talk about such things to an escort lady? But soon enough, all pieces of this puzzle fell into place.

We found out that Nastya Rybka actually wrote a book where she describes this trip. She’s altered all names and locations, but didn’t bother to alter the dates and even times (up to minutes!) of the events. This helped us make sure she’s writing about Deripaska, whose yacht was in Norwegian waters (Nastya changed the location to Greenland in her book) at these exact times. Furthermore, Nastya mentions that someone called “Daddy” was on the yacht as well. She describes “Daddy” as a very powerful Russian politician involved in foreign policy who’s held his post since Yeltsin’s times, and even mentions his exact position: Deputy Prime Minister. Only one person matches Nastya’s description: Sergey Eduardovich Prikhodko.

Nastya writes that Deripaska and Prikhodko weren’t simply vacationing on the yacht. They were discussing some important business matters. When an oligarch invites a government official to his yacht with “escort ladies” to discuss some business matters, this is obviously a bribe. Moreover, it is possible that Deripaska also provided his private jet to Prikhodko, so that he could reach the remote Norwegian peninsula where the yacht was stationed. Again, this would be a bribe in that case.

We thought to ourselves: what possible important matters could Deripaska and Prikhodko could discuss? Then it came to us. Last year, a scandal started in the US when it was revealed that Paul Manafort, the person in charge of Trump’s presidential campaign, was receiving money from Deripaska and offered him private briefings on the progress of the campaign. The media treated it as a proof that Kremlin is trying to influence the outcome of the elections, but that did not quite look plausible back then. After all, Deripaska is just one of the many oligarchs that are close to Putin. There was no proof that he was acting on Putin’s orders and transmitting all the information from Manafort to him. But now we’ve found the missing link: Prikhodko. As Deripaska mentioned, he is friends with Victoria Nuland and probably has some connections in the higher circles of the US government. He’s also very experienced in foreign politics, so the US elections would be among his field of expertise. It was him that Deripaska was transmitting the information to.

To back this theory up, we took a look at Prikhodko’s official income and the property he owns. Naturally, things didn’t quite add up. Prikhodko has been a government official throughout his career, he’s never owned any businesses. And still, he managed to buy a huge mansion near Moscow and two very expensive apartments. The total value of these assets is close to one billion rubles. Even if we take Prikhodko’s wife (whose official income over the last 3 years was 280 million rubles, even though she only owns a yacht club that brings no profit) into account, there is still no way he could have earned enough money for all this through honest methods.

So once again: The missing link between US elections rigging, Paul Manafort, Oleg Deripaska and Kremlin is found. Deputy Prime Minister of Russia spent some time on Deripaska’s yacht discussing foreign policy. Escort ladies attended this “meeting” as well. This is definitely a new low for the corrupt Russian regime.

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