NEWSLINK: “The Quiet Americans Behind the U.S.-Russia Imbroglio; Can Washington’s ‘Russia hands’ help explain why the post-Cold War relationship has gone off the rails?” – New York Times Magazine/Keith Gessen

“The strangest Russian political scandal so far this year – a year that hasn’t lacked for them – revolves around a Belarusian escort named Anastasia Vashukevich, who goes by the name Nastya Rybka. Rybka, whose pseudonym means “little fish,” is a prolific Instagrammer, a teacher of “sex workshops” and the author of a how-to book, “Who Wants to Seduce a Billionaire?” She became famous in Russia this year for having chronicled, on Instagram, her 2016 affair with one particular billionaire, Oleg Deripaska. A few weeks later, she caught the world’s attention after she was arrested in Thailand in the middle of a sex workshop and then claimed, from the back of a police van, that she possessed information that could blow the investigation into Russian meddling in the American presidential election wide open.

This strange story included an intriguing detour into the recent history of United States foreign policy. One of Rybka’s initial posts on the Deripaska affair was a short audio clip from a conversation that took place on the oligarch’s yacht in August 2016. As they sailed off the coast of Norway, Rybka and Deripaska were joined by an influential Kremlin official named Sergei Eduardovich Prikhodko, and in the clip, Deripaska, who made his fortune during the violent aluminum wars of the 1990s, explains some things about geopolitics to Rybka, who was 26 at the time. “Our relations with America are bad,” Deripaska says. “Why? Because the person in charge of them is Sergei Eduardovich’s ‘friend’ – Nuland is what she is called. When she was young – about your age – she spent a month living on a Soviet whaling vessel. Ever since then, she’s hated our country.” ….”