From Russia(to Jeffrey), With Love, Part II
Famous as "the girl who kissed Putin," Masha Drokova also worked for Jeffrey Epstein before she penetrated the Silicon Valley tech sector. Big question: Is Masha another Red Sparrow?
Lana Pozhidaeva (see From Russia(to Jeffrey), with Love, Part I) wasn’t the only Russian tied to Jeffrey Epstein who had curious credentials. During her time with Epstein, Lana took on as partner a Russian woman named Victoria Drokova, who had also been educated at MGIMO, the prestigious academy run that is a training ground for Russian intelligence officials. Her CV raised exactly the same question Lana’s did: Was she an intelligence operative?
Victoria also had another item in her biography that Pozhidaeva did not: Her sister Masha Drokova was a celebrated pro‑Putin activist in Russia who went on to work with Epstein as a publicist and become a notable venture capitalist in Silicon Valley. All of which has led to speculation that Masha, like Lana Pozhidaeva, may have been a so-called “red sparrow” in the mold of Russian emigrés Marina Butina and Anna Chapman.
Drokova did not respond to multiple attempts to reach her through her company Day One Ventures, or her social media accounts.
According to a profile in Mashable, soon after she became famous, Masha launched her own online pro‑Putin TV show in which she asserted that serving Russian intelligence is an honorable pursuit. “I really liked Putin, especially after I learned he liked me,” she said. “When you’re a teenager . . . and the president of the country pays you attention and remembers you, it proves to you that you’re important.”
Nashi's activities were largely managed by Vladislav Surkov, a senior advisor to Putin who's been called the Kremlin's "Grey Cardinal." According to Mashable, she met regularly with Surkov, who she described as a mentor, to arrange propaganda and political campaigns, sometimes accompanied by Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev.
As I wrote in House of Trump, House of Putin:
Surkov was the brilliant puppet master who merged theatrical techniques with PR to alter the way reality is perceived in Putin’s Russia. As one of the architects of hybrid warfare on behalf of Putin, he set out to destroy the very idea of reality, to undermine the whole notion of truth in order to create a never-ending conflict about perception that helped the ability of Putin’s regime to control and manage Russia. The result of Surkov’s work was that it completely befuddled the opposition because the ceaseless flood of contradictory stories meant that no one knew what the enemy was up to or even who they really were, or what was going on.
Sound familiar?
In any case, by 2015, Masha tired of Nashi, moved to New York and went into public relations, serving various tech firms and other clients. Before long, she was named a Forbes “30 Under 30” honoree. Business Insider cited her as a top 50 PR Pro in tech.
She did so well that in 2017 she then set up shop as founder of Day One Ventures, a venture capital and public relations firm where she became an angel investor in early-stage Silicon Valley start-ups in Silicon Valley and promoted various people in the tech world.
She was enormously successful. “I made more than six-fold cash return in the first 1.5 year through exits from Ntechlab and Acquired.io, and the remaining startups continues to grow,” Drokova told East-West Digital News.
If her social media feed on X is accurate, over the next few years, Masha invested in no fewer than eight “unicorns,”that is, start ups that have reached valuations exceeding $1 billion.
By August 2017, Masha, who had taken on Jeffrey Epstein as a client, approached Science Magazine, about interviewing him. In May of the following year, Masha was also a featured panelist on one of Pozhidaeva’s first WE Talks salons addressing the paucity of women venture capitalists.
Masha’s ties to Epstein are of special interest because Putin was obsessed with artificial intelligence, supercomputers, and other forms of cutting-edge technology, and Jeffrey Epstein’s operation provided a perfect point of entry. After all, technology was high on Epstein’s agenda and his salon of Nobel laureates, Silicon Valley heavyweights, and celebrated academics constituted a fabulous assemblage of great minds who, through Epstein’s operation, were entering a secret world with a treasure trove of kompromat—the Russian term for compromising materials. All of which was run by a man who was adept at sex-trafficking, running highly questionable financial machinations, and had ties to both Israeli and Russian intelligence.
By this time, Masha had left the Nashi movement. Having settled in the United States, she said she fell out of love with Putin and issued a statement to that effect that was published in the Washington Post:
I deeply regret ever joining Nashi and supporting Putin and his government. Since 2009, I have disconnected from Russian politics and politicians and have quietly supported individuals and organizations that oppose Putin’s regime. I have cut ties with Russian businesses and have been incredibly intentional about who I will and will not do business with.
Whether that “disillusionment” was real or not is open to question, however. After all, Jeffrey Epstein would have been a treasure trove for a savvy counterintelligence operative. With hidden cameras placed throughout his various homes and dozens of young girls available, Epstein had created a state-of-the-art kompromat factory that could collect dirt on his rich and powerful friends and associates, who over the years have included Bill Clinton, Donald Trump, Prince Andrew, Bill Gates, the late AI pioneer Marvin Minsky, and Apollo Global founder Leon Black.
Moreover, the Washington Post story cited above also noted that, in fundraising pitches, Drokova touted her ties to Russian billionaires, including Alexander Mamut and Vladimir Yevtushenko. In another article, the Post also reported that authorities were concerned about Russian oligarchs penetrating the tech sector “as far back as 2014, when the Boston FBI publicly cautioned the Massachusetts Institute of Technology over an alliance” with Russian oligarchs. The article added that such concerns “have intensified in the wake of Russia’s war in Ukraine, as authorities expand their lists of Kremlin allies to sanction with restrictions on assets or business dealings.”
LiveJournal, an online Russian magazine that serves Putin’s opposition, noted that even though Masha left Russia behind for its biggest adversary, her family fared extremely well after her betrayal—something that happens only rarely under Putin. “It is no less strange that Masha's father, Alexander Drokov, after his daughter's actual emigration to the country of a potential enemy, seriously advanced up the career ladder, becoming the vice-mayor of Tambov for finance,” the magazine reported.
Similarly,in 2018, Russian Monitor, another online magazine allied with Putin’s opposition, published its suspicions that Drokova, like Russian operatives Marina Butina and Anna Chapman, came to the United States “on the instructions of senior comrades from Lubyanka,” a reference to the KGB and its successor, the FSB. If the article left any doubt about the publication’s conclusions, the headline didn’t: “Masha Drokova is another Putin agent in the U.S.”
If you have tips, leads, or insights, please reach out—I am always looking for new information. And don’t forget to comment and share your thoughts!
For the complete story on how Trump became a Russian asset, buy House of Trump, House of Putin, and/or American Kompromat. And don’t miss my latest book, Den of Spies!
House of Trump, House of Putin
The Untold Story of Donald Trump and the Russian Mafia
American Kompromat
How the KGB Cultivated Donald Trump, and Related Tales of Sex, Greed, Power, and Treachery
Den of Spies
Reagan, Carter, and the Secret History of the Treason That Stole the White House
You ever sign a birthday card and regret it later? Probably not as much as this bunch will. Some people get a cake. Some get a Rolex. Jeffrey Epstein got a leather-bound tribute book, inked by billionaires, politicians, media tycoons, university presidents, royalty, and one man who “might have” ended up in a Moscow strip club with Donald Trump. The world’s most radioactive sex trafficker didn’t just collect secrets — he collected signatures. This wasn’t a Hallmark keepsake. It was a damn Rosetta Stone of corruption. A guestbook of the powerful who still thought it wise to kiss the ring long after Epstein’s name was on the sex offender registry.
It wasn’t the full client list. But it was a client list. It was the test group. The early adopters of silence. The ones who didn’t flinch. It said: these were his people. These were the ones who stayed. These were the ones who kept returning calls, kept flying on his jet, kept pretending the stories were all just noise from the envious and unhinged. Now? Now that card reads like a pre-indictment roll call — and the most damning thing about it is how ordinary it made horror look. Polished names. Polite ink. Powerful people lining up to tell a predator just how special he was.
And right there, in the thick of it, you’ll find the ghost of a man most Americans still wouldn’t recognize if he were standing on their front lawn with a subpoena in one hand and a blood-soaked ledger in the other. His name is Leon Black. You’ve probably never heard of him — and that’s exactly how he likes it.
Leon Black isn’t a politician. He doesn’t host talk shows or stage rallies. He’s not a casino mogul or a media tycoon. He’s the money. The actual money. He cofounded Apollo Global Management and has a net worth so vast he could bankrupt most cities without denting his yacht fuel budget. When you’ve reached that level, you don’t run for office — you buy people who already have one. You don’t trend on social media — you build the shadow architecture that makes the trending possible. And you don’t write birthday cards to Jeffrey Epstein for old time’s sake — you do it because you’re still on the payroll.
Black didn’t just sign Epstein’s birthday book. He wired him $170 million after Epstein was a registered sex offender. Not in the nineties. Not in the gray area. This was after Palm Beach. After the girls. After the deal with Acosta. After it was undeniable. And the explanation? Tax advice. Tax advice worth more than most hedge fund bonuses. Tax advice that even Black’s own board couldn’t stomach once it all came out. If you believe that, you’re either complicit or still waiting for Santa Claus.
But this gets worse. Because Leon Black didn’t just know Epstein — he traveled with Donald Trump to Moscow in 1996, right when the Kremlin’s seduction campaign was ramping up. It wasn’t a coincidence. It wasn’t a sightseeing trip. This was the softening-up phase of a decades-long kompromat strategy. Trump was wined, dined, flattered, and reportedly introduced to a former Miss Moscow, whom he may have had a romantic relationship with, according to his own associates. And when Senate investigators later asked Leon Black about that trip, his response was as smirking and slippery as the man himself: he and Trump “might have been in a strip club together.” That’s not a denial. That’s a placeholder for a memory he doesn’t want subpoenaed.
This wasn’t the only Russian tie that mattered. Black later joined the advisory board of RDIF, a Kremlin-backed sovereign wealth fund. He met one-on-one with Vladimir Putin. His financial circles touched sanctioned oligarchs like Oleg Deripaska and Suleiman Kerimov. His consigliere ran in those same murky Moscow channels. If you believe that Russia had kompromat on Trump — and let’s be honest, even Trump’s handlers in the U.S. believe it — then Leon Black is more than just a name on a birthday card. He’s a bridge. The financial artery between Epstein’s vault and Putin’s video reels. The quiet billionaire who can be found at the confluence of sex trafficking, oligarch financing, and American decay.
So why does it matter now? Because the Epstein case was buried before it could exhale. Because the videos were recovered but never shown. Because the names were redacted and the client lists remain locked away like state secrets. Because MAGA Republicans — the very people who scream about trafficking — helped block the release of Epstein’s full archive. And because men like Leon Black still go to work. Still sign checks. Still sit on boards. Still walk free.
The birthday card is a map. A paper trail disguised as affection. A keepsake from the edge of hell. And if you signed that card, you already know what’s coming. If you paid Jeffrey Epstein, you already know why. If you kept quiet, if you helped bury evidence, if you mocked the survivors or hid the tapes or turned your face from the flight logs because it was easier to stay rich than do right — then you are on notice. Because the party’s over. And we’re about to open the presents
RELEASE THE SARS
Senator Ron Wyden’s work as ranking Democrat on the Finance Committee has found that:
4 big banks flagged to the Treasury Department $1.5 billion potentially suspicious money transfers involving Epstein. They did so only after his arrest.
OUR Treasury Dept. has this information: That’s where banks file SUSPICIOUS ACTIVITY REPORTS or SARS.
Hundreds of millions of dollars in wire transfers” passed through several now-sanctioned RUSSIAN BANKS. It appears these wire transfers were correlated to the movement of women or girls around the world.”
Is this one reason Trump is holding back arms to support Ukraine & coddling Putin?
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/17/business/epstein-banks-wyden-trump.html?smid=nytcore-ios-share&referringSource=articleShare