Alleged Kremlin call girl begs for U.S. rescue from Thai jail

Oren Dorell | USA TODAY

Thai police arrested a Belorussian call girl whose tell-all book and Instagram posts inadvertently exposed ties to the Kremlin of a Russian billionaire who’d done business with Paul Manafort, President Trump’s embattled former campaign manager.

Nastya Rybka, the self-described mistress of Russian billionaire Oleg Deripaska, is now begging for an American rescue.

"If we go back to Russia we will die in Russian's prison or they will kill us," she wrote Tuesday on her Instagram account. "Please USA help us not to die from Russians!"

On Tuesday, she posted a video offering her story to American media in exchange for help.

"I am ready to tell you about all those jigsaw puzzles you were missing, to support it with audio, video, regarding the connection between our 'dear' parliament members with Manafort, Trump and all this 'buzz' around the election in the USA," she said, while she appeared to ride in a caged vehicle. "I know a lot. Therefore, I shall wait for your offers, and I wait in the Thai prison."

A post shared by Настя Рыбка (@nastya_rybka.ru) on Feb 27, 2018 at 4:45am PST

Rybka was detained in Thailand Sunday with nine other Russians who police said claimed to be sex experts running a course on lovemaking, according to the Thai newspaper The Nation.

While her story is potentially explosive, she has admitted that some of her past claims were fabricated.

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Rybka's rocket-like trajectory from a little known "model" to chatty sex worker began with a corruption exposé by Alexei Navalny, a Russian opposition leader and critic of President Vladimir Putin.

Navalny used Rybka's memoir Who wants to seduce a billionaire?, her social media postings and geolocation techniques to show that she spent time in August 2016 on Deripaska's yacht off the coast of Norway. She had claimed in her book that the cruise was off the coast of Greenland.

Photos on her Instagram account, @natya_rybka.ru, showed her on the navy blue, teak-decked Elden with Deripaska. They also showed Deripaska there with Sergei Prikhodko, who's described on the Russian government's website as deputy prime minister of the Russian Federation.

Deripaska posted a statement to Instagram on Feb. 9 denouncing any claims of wrongdoing as "outrageous false allegations," and threatened to defend his "honor and dignity" in court. Prikhodko suggested to the Russian newspaper RBK Daily he would like to fight Navalny, but promised to "remain within the legal framework."

Instagram has since removed those posts after the Russian government threatened to ban the photo microblog in Russia. But photos of Rybka on an identical yacht on Aug. 18, 2016, remain.

😉 A post shared by Настя Рыбка (@nastya_rybka.ru) on Aug 19, 2016 at 1:19pm PDT

Prikhodko, a former chief of Putin's Foreign Policy Directorate, talked to Deripaska about American policy in Europe, and mentioned then-undersecretary of State for European Affairs, Victoria Nuland, Navalny said, citing Rybka book.

Rybka described entertaining both men, and referred to Prikhodko as "Daddy," Navalny said. On her Instagram, she later alleged that both men gang-raped her, and then retracted the accusation.

Navalny, whose past investigations focused on public corruption in Russia, said his research exposed bribe taking based on Prikhodko's use of Deripaska's yacht, escort, and travel on Deripaska's private jets to and from the boat after their cruise.

For American readers, however, the story links back to Trump and whether members of his political inner circle participated with the Kremlin's well-documented efforts to influence the 2016 presidential election.

Deripaska was a business associate of Paul Manafort's and hired him starting in 2006 to influence American politics to benefit Russia, according to the Associated Press. The contract stipulated $10 million a year for Manafort's services.

Special Counsel Robert Mueller, who is investigating whether any collusion occurred between the Trump campaign and Russia, indicted Manafort on several charges related to this work, including failure to register as a foreign agent and money laundering during a period that spans his time as Trump's campaign manager.