Alice through the spyglass: What we know about the Russian national arrested by the FBI for espionage

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From Siberia to New York

Nomma Zarubina was born in Tomsk in 1990. She went on to graduate from St. Petersburg State University with a degree in geopolitics and obtained a master's degree in international security at the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration before emigrating to the United States in 2016. In New York, she married an American, had a child, and started working at the local Russian Cultural Center (RCNY) as an event manager, where she organized the annual “Immortal Regiment” march.

The center was founded by Elena Branson, a Russian emigree who previously headed the Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots of the U.S., a formally independent but de facto subordinate organization of the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. (In 2022, The Insider detailed how the council became a tool of Kremlin propaganda). Branson even became godmother to Zarubina's daughter. And then, in Sept. 2020, the FBI swooped in, accusing Branson of working for the Russian government and receiving assignments and funding from high-ranking Russian officials without filing the proper FARA registration. Branson immediately retreated to Russia, where she became a pro-Kremlin TV star. Zarubina remained in the United States, though she continued to fly to Russia even after the Feb. 2022 full-scale invasion began.

Cooperation with the FSB

According to the FBI, in December 2020, during a visit to Russia, Zarubina met with an FSB agent from Tomsk. In her file, he is referred to as “FSB Officer 1.” The agent allegedly proposed that she cooperate with Russian agents under the code name “Alisa,” and he instructed her to seek out U.S.-based journalists, analysts, and military officers. Zarubina is said to have passed people's personal data, including information from social networks, to the agent and participated in operations aimed at promoting the Kremlin’s agenda abroad.

By then, Zarubina had already been acting in Russia’s interest for several years — not only through her involvement with the Russian Cultural Center, but also online. Her social media profiles are rife with patriotic photos. We can see Zarubina on Moscow's Red Square donning a sweater with the print “Russia,” Zarubina with Russian officials as a Russia representative in the UN model, Zarubina giving an interview to the Rossiya TV channel, Zarubina proudly reporting from the St. Petersburg Economic Forum “with the participation of President himself,” Zarubina posing in a T-shirt emblazoned with the letters “KGB” — and, ironically, nearly blowing her cover.

In 2022, Zarubina did a U-turn, miraculously transforming herself from a turbo-patriot into an ardent oppositionist. Instead of photos with former deputy prime minister Arkady Dvorkovich, her social networks show pictures with Ilya Ponomarev, Leonid Volkov, and Lyubov Sobol. Praise of the president gives way to condemnation of “Putin's gang.” Selfies from the UN are replaced with demands to expel the Russian mission from the organization. And as for the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, she denounces participation in the event as a sign of ethical incompetence.

U.S.-based Russian activists did not believe in the newly minted oppositionist’s purported change of heart. In May 2023, Dmitry Valuev, co-founder of the group Russian America for Democracy in Russia, suggested that The Insider pay attention to Zarubina. Valuev found it suspicious that the same girl who had recently been closely involved with the Coordinating Council of Russian Compatriots was now actively seeking contacts with American experts on Russia and with national security and anti-war activists in the Russian diaspora. But not everyone was so vigilant: on Facebook, Zarubina managed to connect with dozens of Russian opposition politicians and independent experts. At the time, The Insider was unable to find evidence of Zarubina's involvement with the FSB, but the FBI managed to get further by examining the contents of her phone.

Key episodes included her travel to the 2021 St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and her work with Russian business and political circles. Although Zarubina claimed that her activities were limited to cultural projects, data from her device proved otherwise: it contained correspondences and photos related to her FSB assignments, the prosecution said.

Zarubina's version

FBI agents held one meeting and three interrogations with Zarubina, during which, according to the prosecution's case file, she significantly changed her testimony, gradually revealing more and more details about her activities — and her ties to Russian intelligence services.

During her first interrogation in October 2020, Zarubina vehemently denied having any contact with Russian intelligence agencies, saying that although some of her college pals from the Russian Academy of National Economy and Public Administration worked in such structures, she did not keep in touch with them. She confirmed her association with Elena Branson (given the many photos of them together, it was hard to deny) and her involvement with the Russian Cultural Center of New York (RCNY) — publishing articles, attending events — but insisted that her activities were limited to cultural projects and had no connection to intelligence work.

At the second interrogation in April 2021, well after the investigation expanded and Branson had fled to Russia, Zarubina confirmed that she had met with Branson during her trip to Russia in late 2020. However, she once again denied having any contact with Russian intelligence agents, claiming that her interaction with Russian authorities during the trip was limited to communications with the Ministry of Health regarding COVID-19.

By August 2022, at her third interrogation, Zarubina had already admitted that she had worked with two Russian non-profit organizations, and that her main task was to network with opinion leaders. She also said that she had interacted with Rossotrudnichestvo, an organization focused on promoting Russia's soft power overseas. However, even then, she continued to deny any contact with Russian intelligence services, including the FSB, during her trips to Russia.

The situation changed at the fourth interrogation in September 2023, when Zarubina admitted for the first time that she'd been in contact with an FSB officer, designated in the file as “Officer 2.” She described their personal relationship and confirmed having used an encrypted messenger to communicate. She also described recruitment by the other FSB agent, “Officer 1,” who had ostensibly approached her in December 2020 in Tomsk, asking for information about useful contacts in the United States. December 2020, Zarubina now said, was when she had signed a cooperation agreement with the FSB, was assigned the code name “Alisa,” and agreed to perform missions, which included establishing ties with American think tanks and seeking out journalists who might be willing to write positive articles about Russia.

At this point, she also admitted that she had previously intentionally concealed these facts. According to her file, she did so out of fear — that there would be legal repercussions, and that she could not trust the FBI. With each new interrogation, her testimony became more and more detailed, starting from a complete denial of any ties to Russian intelligence services and ending with a lengthy description of her role, including cooperation with the FSB, participation in activities on behalf of Russia, and the use of encrypted communication channels.

Still, Zarubina does not consider herself guilty. As she told The Insider, she did not undergo recruitment, but rather a “recruitment opportunity assessment”: the recruiter, a man from among her college pals whose name she cannot disclose due to FBI restrictions, simply assessed her intelligence and social circle. Zarubina failed to explain, however, why — if she had not been effectively recruited — she had been given a code name — and why she then went about doing all the things her recruiter had asked her to do.

Zarubina also told The Insider that she had had long-standing contacts among members of the “U.S. counterintelligence headquarters,” with whom she'd shared classified information. She claims that she has received threatening messages from Russian intelligence services over the years and that she cannot talk about everything that has happened to her “due to personal security issues.”

Zarubina explains her increased interest in American experts by the fact that she “improved her language skills and began to communicate more with Americans”: “I wrote a paper on information security in the post-Soviet space. It's short, but challenging enough for me. When I got the paper out, I found that many Americans were impressed with my views.”

She also claims that Branson was just a good friend of hers and that she never worked in Branson’s organizations — this despite the fact that her LinkedIn profile lists the Russian Cultural Center of New York as her employer.

Not only did Zarubina attend opposition events, but she also participated in the most radical ones. For example, she joined the Free Nations of Post-Russia Forum as an expert, supporting “Russia's decolonization.” Zarubina explained her abrupt change of heart as follows: “Before the war, I maintained close contact with people from Russia, from the consulate, and the embassy. But after the [full-scale] war started, I realized that I had zero interest in the Kremlin.”

Zarubina has been charged with two counts of knowingly making false statements to FBI agents, which could result in five years in prison. She is being charged with hiding ties to the FSB and promoting Russian interests in the United States. The court has set her bail at $25,000, restricted her freedom of movement, and confiscated her passport. The next hearing in her case is scheduled for later this month.