Nastya Rybka, the escort/girlfriend of Oleg Deripaska who revealed an important behind-the-scenes meeting between Deripaska and Sergey Prikhodko. Source: Instagram. Over the last 10 days, the Russian reading public’s demand for popcorn has increased sharply. On 8 February, Alexey Navalny’s Anti-Corruption Foundation published a new investigation, and launched a fascinating new soap opera. The investigation is based on the book and the Instagram account of a young woman, Nastya Rybka, who witnessed a meeting between a deputy prime minister, Sergey Prikhodko, and oligarch Oleg Deripaska. The meeting took place on the billionaire’s yacht in August 2016.
Analysing a string of events between Washington DC and Deripaska’s yacht, Navalny concluded that a possible purpose of the meeting was to allegedly discuss bribing members of Donald Trump’s campaign — and secure Russian influence on American public opinion shortly before the US presidential elections. Deripaska was once a client of Paul Manafort, the US lobbyist with Russia ties who ran part of Trump’s presidential campaign. Prikhodko, who has a relatively low profile, answers for the Kremlin’s “foreign portfolio”.
Even before the public had time to enjoy Navalny’s film, however, a sequel began — this one launched by the Russian state. Less than a day after the investigation came out, Roskomnadzor (the Russian government’s media regulator) requested every outlet that published articles relating to the story to remove images and videos from their websites on the pretext of protecting privacy. On the evening of that same day, Roskomnadzor announced that all online information relating to Navalny’s investigation had been included in Russia’s Unified Register of banned websites. Roskomnadzor didn’t only include videos and pictures from Rybka’s Instagram and in the press, but even Navalny’s website in its entirety. On 15 February, Internet providers across Russia started to block Navalny.com. All this was done on the basis of a court ruling that took 10 minutes to make, establishing “interim measures” pending a proper ruling.
