Agent “Alice”. Russian woman in New York accused of lying about ties to the FSB

According to the FBI, Russian Nomma Zarubina established contacts with journalists, military personnel, and experts on behalf of Russian intelligence services. According to the agency's documents, she lied to US authorities about her ties to Russia, but later admitted that she had cooperated with the FSB.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has charged Russian Nomma Zarubina, who lives in New York, with two counts of making false statements about her ties to Russian intelligence services.

According to the first count of the indictment (the indictment is available to the Voice of America Russian Service), in April 2021, during an FBI interrogation, Zarubina falsely stated that she had no contacts with representatives of the Russian government or intelligence services.

According to the second count of the indictment, Zarubina again gave false testimony in September 2023. She said that a representative of the Federal Security Service (FSB) contacted her only once to ask her about her activities in the United States. At the same time, according to the FBI, during this time Zarubina was in contact with the Russian FSB and carried out tasks in the United States on their behalf.

Voice of America reached out to Zarubina for comment on Monday, December 2. She promised to answer our questions “within a day” after consulting with her lawyer, but at the time of publishing this material, she had not provided any answers.

On her Facebook page, Zarubina wrote that she “is not hiding or running away” and would be happy to talk to the media.

“Please do not rely on the Pravda post – articles by people who do not work and have never worked officially in US law enforcement agencies. They do not have the details of the story, but they have a lot of personal ambitions, which is why word of mouth is spreading,” she noted, adding that “having any business with US law enforcement officers is much more pleasant than with people who spread rumors/opinions/blackmail.”

Zarubina said that she opposed Russian aggression against Ukraine. She participated in events dedicated to the decolonization of Russia. She previously actively collaborated with a Russian cultural organization and was photographed with Russian diplomats.

What is known from court documents

According to the indictment, in December 2020, Tomsk native Zarubina met with an FSB officer in her hometown, then signed a contract with the Russian special service. According to it, she was to help the Russian agency with “network marketing.” Zarubina, who was given the code name “Alice,” cooperated with the Russian special service until approximately 2022, according to the FBI.

According to the indictment, the Russian woman helped the FSB find and establish contacts among journalists and experts from think tanks in the United States. To do this, she attended seminars and forums attended by representatives of the media, science, international relations, and the diplomatic sector.

In June 2024, Zarubina admitted to the FBI that she had lied about her connections with Russian special services during previous interrogations. According to the indictment, the Russian woman confirmed that she had met with an FSB agent from Tomsk several times and corresponded with him frequently. He instructed her to participate in the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in 2021, and also asked her to find journalists who would positively cover this event.

Later, an FSB officer gave her a list of people in American think tanks about whom she was to gather information or with whom she needed to establish contacts. The agent told Zarubina that he wanted to come up with an excuse to invite American journalists and military personnel from her contact bases to Russia in order to introduce them to the “Russian way of thinking.”

As the Russian woman noted during FBI interrogation, she no longer communicates with this FSB agent, as their relationship was difficult both personally and professionally, and she began to feel that he was manipulating her.

In addition, Zarubina admitted to FBI agents that as of 2023, she was in contact with an FSB officer from Moscow, with whom she “had previously studied at the university and with whom she had developed a personal relationship.”

He told her that his job was to interrogate compatriots who come to Russia but live and work in the United States. He also told her that there was a note in the FSB database that “she has strong interpersonal skills, and that these skills are rare for people who work with the FSB.”

During the FBI interrogations, Zarubina also admitted that she had a close personal relationship with the then Deputy Permanent Representative of the Russian Federation to the UN and that she was in contact with representatives of the Russian Cooperation Agency.

On November 21, 2024, Zarubina was released on bail of $25,000 by court decision. Her passport was confiscated, she was forbidden to leave New York and communicate with officials of foreign countries, except for representatives of the Russian consulate. A preliminary hearing in Zarubina's case is scheduled for late December.

Zarubina's connection to Elena Branson, who is accused of working for Russia

The FBI first questioned Zarubina in October 2020, in connection with a criminal case against the head of the Coordination Council of Russian Compatriots' Organizations (CCRO) Elena Branson, whom the FBI accused of illegally working as a Russian agent in 2022. Branson left New York for Russia in October 2020, after a search of her American office.

According to information on Zarubina's social media, she worked at the CCRO from 2016 to February 2022. During the FBI's interrogation, the Russian woman said that she developed the council's website and published links and materials there, including her own authorship. Branson, whom she calls her mentor, introduced Zarubina to important people.

Zarubina told the FBI that during her trips to Russia, she met with Branson, who in turn asked her about the details of the case against her and asked if she could travel. As noted in the case materials, in addition to professional ties, there are also family ties – Branson is the godmother of Zarubina's daughter.

As noted on Zarubina's Facebook profile, in Russia she studied at St. Petersburg State University (SPbSU) and the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Service under the President of the Russian Federation (RANEX). She moved to the United States around 2016, the indictment says.

One of the latest events that Zarubina wrote about on social media – this is the “Free Peoples' Forum Post-Russia” conference in Canada in mid-November, in which she participated as “an independent researcher, a graduate of the Marx School of Public and International Affairs at Baruch College in New York, and a former representative of an NGO to the UN (from Tomsk)”.

Two days after the court's decision to release her on bail, Zarubina posted on Facebook that she “feels like an American in terms of values ​​such as freedom, privacy, positive thinking, community, national security – ed., and opposes the Russian Federation's aggressive war against Ukraine from its very beginning to this day”, and also asked for help with her work in New York.

Zarubina's Instagram page has many photos with famous people. Until 2022, the accused was photographed with Russian diplomats and officials, including the Russian Permanent Representative to the UN Vasily Nebenzey, his deputy Dmitry Polyansky, the Russian Ambassador to the US Anatoly Antonov, and the Head of Tatarstan Rustam Minnikhanov.

She published photos from events related to diplomacy, the UN, or other international organizations.

After 2022, her preferences for choosing people for joint photos changed a lot.

Zarubina posted photos with oppositionists Leonid Volkov and Lyubovya Sobol, writer Viktor Shenderovich, poet Dmitry Bykov, former special assistant to the US President for European and Russian affairs Fiona Gill and experts from Washington think tanks, many of whom were former military personnel.