Nomma Zarubina appears at a Nov. 19 forum in Ottawa’s Wellington Building called Rethinking Russia’s Future. Ms. Zarubina was arrested by the FBI on Nov. 21, after returning home from Ottawa.Supplied
A Russian political consultant recently accused by the FBI of working for Moscow’s spies spoke on Parliament Hill last month at a conference on Russia’s future where she mingled with MPs, academics and policy makers.
Nomma Zarubina appeared at a Nov. 19 forum in Ottawa’s Wellington Building called Rethinking Russia’s Future, organized by groups critical of the Kremlin. The Wellington Building, which contains MPs’ offices and committee rooms, is part of the parliamentary precinct.
Ms. Zarubina, who lives in New York and describes herself as a political consultant and researcher, was arrested on Nov. 21, after returning home from Ottawa. She was subsequently released on US$25,000 bail with conditions, according to documents filed in court, including “no contact with foreign government officials other than Russian consular officials.”
The Russian was charged with two counts of false statements, according to filings in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York.
A criminal complaint by a Federal Bureau of Investigation special agent alleged that she told them she had not been in contact with members of the Russian government or its intelligence services, “when in truth and in fact” Ms. Zarubina was in communication with an agent of the Federal Security Service (FSB) of the Russian Federation. The FSB is the successor to the Soviet Union’s KGB.
The agent alleged in the filing that Ms. Zarubina had been in “regular communication” with an FSB officer since about December, 2020 through 2022 “and had agreed to help the FSB with particular tasks to perform in the United States.”
FBI agent Peter Dubrowski also alleged that Ms. Zarubina signed an agreement to help the FSB with what he called “network marketing” in the U.S. and was assigned the codename “Alyssa” for use in internal FSB documents.
He alleged that as part of her work, she was asked to build contacts that included attending seminars, forums and conventions “with the goal of cultivating relationships in the U.S. and elsewhere.”
None of these allegations have been proved in court.
Oleg Magaletsky, founder of Free-Nations of Post Russia Forum, which helped organize the Parliament Hill event, said his organization wasn’t aware of any red flags about Ms. Zarubina and noted that she had previously spoken at another event in the United States.
“Nomma Zarubina has U.S. and Canadian visas, which in part gave us confidence that Western governments did their checks and allowed her inside the country,” he said. “Not a single government agency has flagged her alleged involvement with the FSB to us, which would have of course automatically disqualified her from participating in our events.”
Conservative MP James Bezan, an outspoken critic of Moscow’s assault on Ukraine, assisted the Nov. 19 event by booking a room in Wellington Block for it. A number of MPs attended all or part of the event including Mr. Bezan, Conservative MP Shuvaloy Majumdar and Bloc Québécois MP René Villemure.
Mr. Bezan noted that the Macdonald–Laurier Institute (MLI) was an organizational partner. Other partners included the League of Ukrainian Canadians, the Canadian Association of Crimean Tatars, and the Centre for Eastern European Democracy.
“I’m very familiar with MLI, which has been sanctioned by the Kremlin, as I have been since 2014. MLI has been outspoken in its support for the people of Ukraine as it defends itself from the Russian invasion,” he said.
He said he doesn’t recall speaking to Ms. Zarubina and was not present for her speech.
Ms. Zarubina denied in an interview Tuesday that she worked for Russia’s FSB. “I am not a Russian agent,” she said. “I didn’t help them. I never worked for them.”
Ms. Zarubina spoke at the forum on Parliament Hill where she advocated “to make Siberia and other regions independent from Moscow because I was born and raised in Siberia and the Kremlin, for us, is always historically a big threat for us.”
Ms. Zarubina said she drove to Ottawa on Nov. 18 and returned home to New York on Nov. 20.
“I was in the FBI building that day [Nov. 21]. I was arrested at 8 a.m. because I had an appointment with the counter-intelligence division,” she said. “I didn’t know they wanted to arrest me.”
She had to surrender her Russian passport after the charges. Ms. Zarubina said she is worried for her safety if she was to return to Russia.
Andy Ellis, former assistant director of operations at the Canadian Security Intelligence Service, expects the FBI would have informed CSIS that Ms. Zarubina was travelling to Canada and that she would have been under surveillance. Russia would have jumped at the opportunity to have an agent of influence on Parliament Hill, he said.
“If there was an opportunity to go to Parliament Hill, an adversarial intelligence agency is going to jump on that one because you get access to such a wide swath of individuals,” he said. “They are picking up business cards and opening up discussions with people, even potentially saying ‘I have this think tank in the United States and we’d like to invite you to speak at’ so they stroke the ego so that maybe they can engender a closer relationship.”
Mr. Ellis said at times Russian assets find either a politician, bureaucrat or academic that causes Moscow to do a deep dive to “assess whether or not continued cultivation is worthwhile.”
A Bloc spokesman said Mr. Villemure took part in this forum and that Ms. Zarubina then sent him her research paper. “Mr. Villemure thanked her for this and had no further exchanges with her,” Julien Coulombe-Bonnafous said in a statement.
Mr. Majumdar, the Conservative MP, said “there were well over a hundred people at the event, and I spoke to many of them.” He added that he “may have briefly spoken to the individual in question at the reception. I don’t remember anything noteworthy or remarkable.”
Ms. Zarubina, who said she has been living in New York for 10 years, insisted that she had been co-operating with the FBI for several years.
“My intent was to help the American side. That is why I kept from time to time specific kinds of information with the Russians to provide this communication to the Americans, so I don’t know why they didn’t appreciate this.”
Mr. Ellis said all Russian intelligence agencies use agents of influence to gather information and develop relations at think tanks, universities and with politicians and policy makers. Russia also uses agents of influence to not only gather information but to promote on Russia’s behalf to “create voices” that are contrary to Russian adversaries.