A Russian citizen living in New York with close links to a Russian-American spy who fled from the U.S. has been accused by federal investigators of lying to the FBI about her contact with Russian intelligence services, attempting to "promote Russian interests and influence in the United States."
Nomma Zarubina, 34, was recruited by Russia's FSB federal security service in or around December 2020 and agreed to help the spy agency with "network marketing" in the U.S., a criminal complaint filed last month alleges. She was given the codename "Alyssa," and stayed in regular contact with her Russian-based handler, operating from Zarubina's home city of Tomsk in Siberia, until 2022, according to the complaint.
The complaint said the FBI had conducted "several voluntary interviews" from October 2020 with Zarubina, partly because of her "close relationship and work" with a dual American-Russian citizen, Elena Branson. Branson was charged in March 2022 with acting illegally as an agent of the Russian government, willfully failing to register as a foreign agent, conspiring to commit visa fraud and making false statements to the FBI.
Branson is Zarubina's daughter's godmother, according to the FBI. Branson flew to Moscow in October 2020 and has never returned to the U.S., investigators said.
In July 2024, Zarubina said she had previously lied to federal authorities about having no links to the FSB, and "admitted to the FBI certain aspects of her relationship" with Moscow's federal security service, according to the complaint.
Zarubina was asked by the FSB to "identify and develop potential contacts within the United States," according to the complaint.
In July 2024, Zarubina told the FBI that the FSB had asked her to point out "helpful contacts in the United States, including America journalists and military personnel," and pass their contact details to the FSB so Russian intelligence could devise a way to bring these people to Russia to "convert" these contacts to the "Russian way of thinking," the document alleges.
Zarubina told The Independent on Tuesday that she was surprised by her arrest on November 21, and that she headed for FBI offices in Lower Manhattan expecting a question-and-answer session much like she had experienced several times over the previous four years. "Why did they decide to arrest me now? It's a great question."
Zarubina told the British newspaper that she "was honest with the FBI, except for two episodes in 2021 and 2023." She was "afraid to declassify the whole story," she said, but insisted her "motivation was to get and share the most sensitive and vital information with them."
Zarubina separately said in a post to social media on Monday that she was seeing increased media coverage on her arrest, adding: "I am not hiding or running away."
Russian America for Democracy in Russia, an organization describing itself as a pro-democratic Russian presence in the U.S., said Zarubina had been released on bail, and was banned from leaving New York.
According to the FBI document, Zarubina emigrated to the U.S. in roughly 2016, after graduating from the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration. She then worked as a political affairs officer for the Russian Center New York for several years, an organization Branson incorporated in the U.S., the FBI said.
The Center for Strategic and International Studies, a U.S. think tank, listed Zarubina under a collection of fellows in 2022. Her biography on the site describes her as an "NGO representative to the United Nations of several social-oriented NGOs" who "also works as a business connector between the private and public sectors."
She graduated from St. Petersburg State University in 2013, before securing a master's degree from the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration three years later, specializing in national security, according to the biography.
She also attended the Marxe School of Public and International Affairs in New York until 2022, the biography said, adding: "Long-term living abroad and various joint projects with people in different fields have given her a clearer idea of the peculiarities of working with the Russian and American government authorities using public diplomacy."
In 2019, Russian national Maria Butina was sentenced to 18 months in prison after pleading guilty to a federal charge of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government. She had acted as an agent for a Russian government official between 2015 and 2017 before she was arrested in July 2018 in Washington, D.C., the U.S. Department of Justice said as she was sentenced.
Butina "provided key information about Americans who were in a position to influence United States politics and took steps to establish an unofficial line of communication between Russia and these Americans," the U.S. government said.
Experts previously told Newsweek that Russian President Vladimir Putin, a former operative of the Soviet-era KGB security agency, had ushered in a new air of "respectability" and glamor to being a Russian spy.
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