So this story starts with a normal day in Pattaya. The arrest of Russian nationals. Nothing too unusual about that.
The ten Russians remain in the custody of Pattaya police and have been charged with working without permission and staying in the country illegally.
The nature of their work – they were arrested while giving certificates in sexual skills to 43 compatriots in a Pattaya hotel room early on Monday morning.
This really could only happen in Pattaya! Actually how do you even get 53 people into a Pattaya hotel room – and do so without attracting attention.
A police investigation (or a tip-off) found that a Russian couple, who were among the arrested suspects, had set up an institute for sex science in Thailand and were using a Pattaya hotel room for teaching sex skills to their compatriots. The eight other suspects worked as trainers
One of the trainees, a Russian woman whose name was withheld, told police that the training course took four days and cost each trainee 45,000 baht. The course taught sexual techniques and also taught women how to find and beguile wealthy men to be their spouses. Trainees were also given books detailing the techniques.
A very Pattaya story. So far.
Enter Anastasia Vashukevich, aka Nastya “Rybka” (“small fish”), a 23-year-old Belarussian-born former escort. Rybka, with her “sex trainer,” Alex Lesley, were among those taken into custody by Pattaya police.
Rybka made her name in Russia for authoring “A Diary About Seducing a Billionaire,” a tell-all tale which was published in Oct 2016.
She also practised what she preached.
In Rybka’s book she apparently details what appears to be her “relationship” with Oleg Deripaska, outgoing chief of the Russian metals giant Rusal. Deripaska, apart from being among a trio of oligarchs Russian President Vladimir Putin regularly leans on, has also been described as the “patron” for former Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort.
Oops – so now Russian sex training in Pattaya is linked to the Trump campaign.
In Russia, 50-year-old Oleg Deripaska is known as the winner of some brutal crime wars that left him a billionaire aluminum magnate and President Vladimir Putin’s favorite industrialist.
According to a report in The Washington Post last September, Manafort owes Deripaska $19 million and, only two weeks before Trump accepted the nomination as the Republican presidential candidate in July 2016, offered to brief Deripaska on the U.S. race.
Now, thanks to inquiries by corruption-fighting opposition leader Aleksei Navalny and revelations by Nastya Rybka Deripaska’s biography has added a new chapter that might in fact form part of the trail to Trump.
On Thursday, Navalny published an exposé on YouTube describing Deripaska’s three-day long yacht voyage in 2016 in the company of Rybka and Russia’s Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Prikhodko, who is the Kremlin’s most influential official with regard to foreign relations, albeit with one of the lowest profiles.
It is all a bit circumstantial. Navalny gave his YouTube video the title: “Yachts, Oligarchs, Girls: A Huntress for Men Exposes a Bribe-Taker.” You can look for it. There are sub-titles.
Much of the Navalny video is based on Rybka’s already published Instagram photos and a her tell-all book she published last year.
So, naturally, there have been many questions about Rybka’s motivations. It is unclear why it took the self-avowed “sex huntress” more than a year to start publishing her photographs of Deripaska sitting next to Prikhodko on the yacht, which is a clear indication, as Navalny notes, of unacceptable corruption.
“Rybkagate” is now all over the Russian internet. But she has been detained in Thailand! While still in custody Rybka has published Instagram videos asking U.S. journalists and intelligence agencies to help her.
“I am the only witness and the missing link in the connection between Russia and the U.S. elections — the long chain of Oleg Deripaska, Prikhodko, Manafort, and Trump,” Rybka said in a live Instagram video Tuesday, apparently shot as she was driven in an open-air police van through the Pattaya. “In exchange for help from U.S. 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.”
Rybka further claims that she was arrested on orders of Russian officials as payback for her video of Deripaska and Prikhodko and that she expected to be sent to Russia, where she would be jailed again.
“Please USA save us from Russia!” said a post in English on her Instagram account. “All this cases are political repressions!”
Coincidentally or not, one of Russia’s most important security and intelligence officials was also in Thailand on Tuesday. Russian Security Council Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, former head of the Federal Security Service, held talks in Bangkok with Prime Minister Prayuth on the security of Russian tourists.
There is probably a Russian plane already Rybka home to a very uncertain future.