Just after 2 p.m. on the first Tuesday of December, in the lower Manhattan courthouse for the US Southern District of New York, a 35-year-old Russian woman and mother of a young daughter stood before a federal judge and pleaded not to be sent to jail.
"My life now seems like a tragedy because I get almost every day threats from many people from many countries who think that I was a spy but they don't know the whole story," Nomma Zarubina told the court, in near-fluent English. "No one knows the whole story."
About 12 months earlier, Zarubina had been arrested and charged with repeatedly lying to the FBI about her interactions with Russia's main domestic intelligence agency, the Federal Security Service. For years, authorities alleged, Zarubina cultivated relationships with journalists, think-tank experts, and academics, as well as Russian opposition activists in the United States at the specific instruction of intelligence officers in Russia.
At the December 2 hearing, the judge was less interested in the whole story than in the fact that in recent months Zarubina had allegedly sent scores of text messages and photographs, often while drunk, to one of the FBI agents who had interviewed her previously. Prosecutors said she was "taunting" the agent.
"How are you?" she wrote in one of several text messages that were filed in court records. "I'm so tired. Everything is so f***ed up."
Zarubina allegedly sent scores of text messages and photos to FBI agents while she was out on bail, pending trial.
During the December 2 hearing, Zarubina lashed out at the FBI, including the very agent she was accused of stalking, who was in the courtroom.
The FBI "actually work the same like Russians work," she said. "They frame people, they build cases. You know this. They essentially inflated [my] case all the time, and now all of you are very focused on my drinking, but I don't drink often."
The judge was sympathetic but unimpressed. He ordered her jailed, pending trial.
Zarubina's case is the latest in a series that have drawn public attention -- and fascination. Maria Butina, Natalia Burlinova, Elena Branson, Aleksandr Ionov -- all Russians with direct links to Moscow intelligence spending years forging ties in emigre circles and building networks among Western think tanks, journalists, and cultural groups.
Zarubina "acted as a very good access asset: She established initial contacts with persons of interest and made sure she was remembered, so those contacts could be exploited later, by her or by other, more skillful operatives," said Andrei Soldatov, an investigative journalist and co-author of a book about Russian emigre communities and how frequently they are infiltrated by Russian intelligence agencies. "It is a very good, traditional tactic."
'A Clearer Idea Of The Peculiarities'
The FBI said it "first approached" Zarubina on October 5, 2020, in connection with an investigation into Branson, another Russian woman who had lived and worked in New York for years.
About a week before the FBI interviewed Zarubina, agents raided Branson's Manhattan apartment, executing a search warrant. The apartment, which Branson owned as a result of her divorce years earlier from the late Princeton University economist William Branson, doubled as a home office for the organization she ran called the Russian Center New York.
Three weeks after the FBI search, Branson fled to Russia. In a subsequent interview with state TV, she said armed FBI agents took iPhones, iPads, computers, documents, and tax declarations during the search. About 18 months later, in March 2022, US prosecutors filed criminal charges against Branson, accusing her of working as an unregistered agent of the Russian government for nearly a decade.
The first image on this Telegram post shows a 2019 forum in New York attended by Zarubina (second from right) and Branson (last on left)
A native of the Siberian city of Tomsk, Zarubina immigrated to the United States in 2016 after graduating from an elite Moscow university. She went to work for Branson, helping to run the website for the Russian Center, which promoted Russian cultural events with funding, and explicit guidance, from Russian authorities.
Branson was also the godmother of Zarubina's daughter, and Zarubina said she was close to Branson's daughter.
In Washington and elsewhere, Zarubina was a prolific networker, joining panel discussions and advocacy groups, attending book talks, hobnobbing with Russians and Americans alike. She posted scores of photographs to her social media accounts. She spoke at events in Washington and Ottawa, including one discussing "decolonizing Russia."
In the fall of 2022, she landed a fellowship at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a well-known Washington think-tank.
"Long-term living abroad and various joint projects with people in different fields have given [Zarubina] a clearer idea of the peculiarities of working with the Russian and American government authorities using public diplomacy," according to her profile. The center removed it after her arrest, citing its inability to verify her professional background.
A snapshot of her now-deleted profile for a fellowship at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank
She also traveled regularly back to Russia, and beginning in December 2020, she was in contact with an FSB officer from her hometown, Tomsk. According to court filings, she signed an agreement to help the FSB with "network marketing."
Her FSB contact gave Zarubina a code name, Alyssa, as well as list of individuals at US think tanks and other organizations, and told her to obtain information about them or contact them, court records say.
She also met with Branson, who pressed Zarubina for information about the status of Branson's own case. In early 2022, Branson requested Zarubina ask the FBI if it was safe for Branson to travel back to the United States, Zarubina told the FBI.
Over the course of next four years, Zarubina also sat for at least five interviews with the FBI -- in which, among other things, she described her interactions with an FSB officer with whom she "developed a personal relationship."
The FBI obtained a search warrant to search her cell phone, a warrant directly tied to her relationship with Branson, according to court records.
SEE ALSO: 'Creative Diplomacy' And The FSB: Was A Russian NGO Bridging Divides Or Spying On Unwitting Participants?In her final interview with the FBI, on July 24, 2024, Zarubina allegedly showed agents the contact information for one of the FSB officers whom she felt manipulated her, according to court records, which "ultimately led to a fracture in their relationship."
On November 21, 2024, Zarubina was arrested.
Prosecutors later added more charges: transporting women around the New York region for prostitution and lying on her US immigration application.
Butina, Burlinova, Branson, And More
Zarubina's actions -- and the allegations she was working at the behest of the FSB -- fit into a pattern of cases over the past decade. Her relationship with Branson is a central element in her prosecution by US authorities. However, they face two sets of charges: Zarubina, primarily lying to the FBI; Branson primarily being an unregistered foreign agent.
SEE ALSO: Russian-American Woman Who Fled To Moscow Charged With Being Unregistered Foreign AgentBranson's prosecution stems from allegations that she closely coordinately her work at the Russian Center New York and related groups with Russian government officials and received "tens of thousands of dollars."
In two other similar cases, US authorities said they pinpointed a specific FSB office that was directing and coordinating work of the people in the United States.
The first was Natalia Burlinova, who founded a nongovernmental group called Creative Diplomacy that hosted young journalists, public policy specialists, and newly minted graduate students from the United States and Europe at annual events in Russia. Participants attended lectures given by former Russian spies.
SEE ALSO: 'You Wanted Turmoil. You Got It': How FSB Officers Chatted, And Plotted, To Sow Discord In The U.S.The second was Aleksandr Ionov, a Russian businessman who founded an NGO called the Anti-Globalization Movement and pushed a quixotic effort to get the state of California to secede from the United States.
The FSB unit that oversaw both those efforts, according to US officials, was the Second Directorate, formally known as the Service for the Protection of the Constitutional System and the Fight Against Terrorism. The unit's chief and a subordinate officer coordinated the effort.
Another case that drew wide attention was that of Maria Butina, a Russian graduate student who was an active networker particularly among activists from US gun-rights groups, as well as the Republican Party. Arrested in Washington in 2018, she pleaded guilty to working as an unregistered foreign agent and spent 15 months in US prison before being released and deported back to Russia, where she was later elected to parliament.
In the October 2021 Russian state TV interview where Branson discussed some of the details of the FBI raid and her decision to flee the US, the interviewer was Butina.
'So Many Spies'
After Zarubina's arrest, she was released on $25,000 bail, her travel restricted, and her passport confiscated.
SEE ALSO: 'Espionage-Lite:' Maria Butina 'Not A Spy In The Traditional Sense'In an extensive interview with RFE/RL's Siberia Realties conducted shortly after her release on bail, Zarubina confirmed she had numerous contacts with the FSB during her trips. She said she had been forced into working with them.
"They wrote to me, sometimes threateningly, because that's basically how they work -- like, 'We see everything, we're kind of keeping an eye on you, even there in New York,'" she told RFE/RL.
In the spring and summer of 2025, she spent most of her time in Brooklyn, where she had an apartment and lived with her young daughter. That September, Zarubina received court permission to spend a week in Texas, where her daughter was at the time, according to court records. It wasn't clear why her daughter was there.
She also, prosecutors said, sent scores of messages on several occasions to one of the lead FBI agents in her investigation. Some of the messages included photographs of her standing outdoors in a cowboy hat, drinking what appeared to be glasses of red wine. Some were sent in the dead of the night.
"I need you. Call to the court. Please. Wake up. You are SO smart," she said in one string of disjointed messages sent at 4 a.m. on September 13. "So many Russians. And Prostitutions in Manhattan."
"Catch me baby. So many spies," she wrote.
In September, prosecutors accused her of stalking the FBI agent and asked the court to revoke her bail. Her court-appointed defense lawyer told the court that the texts were "largely a byproduct of her being intoxicated and texting the agent while drunk. This is supported by the incoherent nature of the text messages and the time of day in which they are sent."
"While Zarubina's text messages may certainly be an annoyance to the [FBI agent], these messages do not suggest that she poses a danger to him," the lawyer, Kristoff Williams, wrote in his September 22 filing.
Williams did not respond to e-mails seeking comment.
The court ordered her to attend alcohol abuse treatment and "intensive" mental health counseling.
At a final emergency hearing on December 2, however, prosecutors said Zarubina had continued sending messages, despite previous warnings, accusing her of "relentlessly and illegally harassing an FBI witness."
In her own remarks to the court, Zarubina said she felt she had been manipulated, or used, by the FBI. She said she had provided evidence and other information to the bureau about her FSB contacts.
"Honestly very deep inside I'm proud that I produced and shared so much valuable information with the FBI, even though they never appreciated that," she said, according to a court transcript. "And that's what I got from them, a pack of candy, chocolate candy, after all our meetings."
She brandished a pack of candy to the court. The judge cut her off and revoked her bail.
Her trial is scheduled for June.