Leaked documents expose global Russian soft-power influence network
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Russia’s spy ring used SPIEF, Africa forums, and diaspora hubs for outreach (Photo: REUTERS/Marina Lystseva TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY)
NV English has obtained documents revealing a sprawling Russian global espionage and influence network — evidence of the Kremlin’s effort to build a civilian ecosystem for shaping international narratives.
Updated at 16:06 GMT+2
After publication, Nomma Zarubina contacted NV English and asked to add the following statement: she says she has cooperated with the FBI on this matter since 2021. “Despite the agents obtaining all information from me, they decided to build a case at the end of 2024,” Zarubina said.
According to the United Front of Resistance (UFR), a clandestine global anti-Kremlin organization, its operatives carried out an operation targeting Nomma Zarubina, a 36-year-old Russian citizen currently awaiting court hearings in the United States on multiple charges. The group says it remotely provided all intelligence gathered during the operation to Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU).
The United Front also suggested that a June 2025 visit to Zarubina by Sarah Ashton-Cirillo in New York — a visit that was publicly documented on X — played a role in enabling the operation. At the time, Ashton-Cirillo served as an official volunteer representing Ukraine’s foreign recruitment efforts. She declined to comment, citing her current deployment as a sergeant in the Armed Forces of Ukraine on the eastern front.
As indicated on her Facebook page, Zarubina was born in Tomsk, a city in Siberia. She studied national security at the Russian Presidential Academy of National Economy and Public Administration (RANEPA) and at St. Petersburg State University. After receiving what is considered a first-class education by Russian standards, she began traveling extensively after 2011. Zarubina maintained a visible public profile, frequently appearing at international conferences as a speaker or expert, including events organized by the Russian exile opposition.
In December 2024 the U.S. Justice Department charged Russian-born Zarubina, who lived in New York, with making false statements to FBI agents about her ties to FSB. According to the complaint, Zarubina — recruited by the FSB in 2020 under the codename “Alyssa” — cultivated contacts with American journalists, mi litary analysts and think-tank experts. Prosecutors allege she attended forums in the U.S. and Europe to advance Kremlin narratives. She was arrested on November 21, 2024, and released on $25,000 bail with restrictions: surrendering her passport, remaining in New York, and avoiding contact with Russian officials. While Zarubina denied formally working for the FSB, the FBI complaint asserts she confessed in a 2023 interview to having lied about her contacts.
Inside Russia’s global soft-power spy ring
Documents obtained by NV English reveal an extensive, multi-layered influence-and-recruitment ecosystem run by Russian security services that reaches across Europe, Africa, Asia, North America, and the Middle East. At the center of this system is a familiar pattern: public-facing “youth diplomacy,” cultural outreach, and civil-society networks masking covert intelligence collection, talent-spotting, and narrative penetration.
Zarubina's case provides an unusually detailed window into how that machine functions. It shows how Russian intelligence embeds itself within global social networks, uses state-sponsored conferences as recruitment venues, and merges diaspora outreach with covert operations.
A recruitment hub disguised as a youth network
A consistent hub in Zarubina’s network was Roman Chukov, a senior Kremlin-connected youth policy official and co-founder of Friends for Leadership (FFL). According to the documents, Chukov chaired the Ruspromo Foundation and previously served as Assistant Director for Youth Policy at the Roscongress Foundation — the Kremlin entity that runs the annual St. Petersburg International Economic Forum (SPIEF). His programs, including FFL and international youth panels at SPIEF, served as “recruitment pipelines” connecting Russian officials with dozens of foreign participants.
Through Chukov, Zarubina gained access to an international roster of young politicians, media figures, social entrepreneurs, and academics — many of whom appeared repeatedly across Russian-backed events: SPIEF youth forums, Russia–Africa congresses, Valdai-affiliated policy discussions, BRICS research groups, and even the Davos “Russian House” in 2020.
These were not coincidental gatherings. Investigators concluded that the same individuals resurfaced across platforms because the events were woven into a single, state-directed ecosystem aimed at cultivating future interlocutors sympathetic — or useful — to Moscow’s geopolitical messaging.
Multiple Russian operatives guiding her work
The documents make clear that Zarubina’s activities in the United States were not independent freelancing. She was recruited by the FSB in 2020, given the codename “Alyssa,” and tasked with identifying journalists, think-tank professionals, and community leaders who might be suitable for eventual recruitment.
Her handlers included at least one FSB lieutenant colonel responsible for counterintelligence related to Russian assets in the U.S., as well as another senior operative who maintained direct contact even after her arrest. In one instance, Zarubina provided investigators with a private photograph confirming a handler’s identity after he reached out to her following FBI questioning.
Documents also reveal a series of Russian figures tied to political operations and security structures:
Dmitry Polyanskiy, Russia’s deputy representative to the UN
Olga Lapina, Executive Director of the Russian Geographic Society and an SVR operative
Dimitri Simes, Russian political advisor and media figure who mentored her for a week
Igor Kochan, who fled the United States after FBI interest
Artem Lifshits, a sanctioned Russian hacker
These relationships reflect the integrated nature of her assignments: diplomacy, propaganda, “civil society” outreach, and intelligence work overlapped seamlessly.
A global footprint: Africa, Asia, Middle East, and beyond
Zarubina’s contact list spanned 20+ countries and included foreign academics, youth leaders, media contributors, development consultants, BRICS researchers, and participants in Russian government-sponsored programs.
Among them:
African media contributors linked to Sputnik Africa
A Valdai Club–affiliated academic
A BRICS policy researcher
Delegates to Russia–Africa youth forums
A Turkish–Pakistani outreach coordinator
UN youth diplomats
Entrepreneurs tied to SPIEF and Davos Russian House initiatives
Many contacts were assessed as “special interest,” meaning they represented potential recruitment or influence targets due to their public roles or future leadership trajectories.
The pattern across all regions was consistent: Russia invested heavily in building friendly personal relationships with young professionals, often before they reached positions of authority. The aim, investigators concluded, was to shape ideological leanings early, create long-term access points inside foreign institutions, and normalize Russian geopolitical narratives on a global scale.
Diaspora fronts and intelligence cover
Another layer of the network operated through Russian diaspora institutions. Zarubina told investigators that the Russian Orthodox Patriarchate Church in New York acted as a front for intelligence operations and that she visited it with known agent Elena Branson immediately after Branson’s first FBI interview.
The documents describe how the FSB exploited Zarubina’s international work to make her pay her own travel expenses, enabling her to move across continents and attend various gatherings at minimal cost to the state — a tactic that allowed Moscow to scale its outreach far beyond formal diplomatic channels.
A system built to endure
What emerges from the documents is not the story of a lone agent but a global architecture of influence — a system that blends open diplomacy with clandestine operations. Zarubina’s case illustrates how Russian intelligence embeds itself within youth, cultural, and academic networks, using events such as SPIEF, Friends for Leadership gatherings, and Russia–Africa forums as platforms that serve both public and covert purposes. Investigators found that operatives cultivate foreign individuals for years before activating them, while diaspora institutions quietly provide logistical and informational support. The entire ecosystem merges soft power with targeted intelligence collection.
NV English reached out to Zarubina for comment ahead of her court appearance on Dec.2 2025. Asked about her legal status, she stressed that the proceeding was “not a trial, but a hearing,” adding that it would focus only on procedural details. “We’re only going to discuss specific points,” she said. “No major decision will be issued.”
When asked whether she felt Russia had abandoned her, Zarubina did not hesitate. “No one from any official Russian structure has contacted me,” she said. “I expect nothing from them — and I’m not going to reach out either.”
She described her situation starkly: “In a way, I think I’ve been hung out to dry. No one seems to know what to do with me — or even who I am to them.”
Pressed on how and when her association with the FSB began, Zarubina rejected the idea that she had been formally recruited. “There was no recruitment,” she insisted. “It simply didn’t suit me. I have a very strong, difficult personality that does not allow me to function inside structures like that.”
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