The U.S. should accept Belarusian escort Anastasia Vashukevich’s asylum request.
Vashukevich, who is currently being held in Thailand for her involvement in a reported sex seminar (yes, you read that right), faces deportation to Belarus.
However, as the New York Times reported on Monday, Vashukevich claims she has 16 to 18 hours of audio recordings implicating Russian oligarch, Oleg Deripaska in 2016 U.S. election interference. The claim is credible in that Vashukevich was previously Deripaska’s mistress and, whether directly or indirectly, supported Alexei Navalny’s reporting on Deripaska’s possible connection to Russian interference in the 2016 election.
There are two broader factors supporting a positive U.S. response to Vashukevich’s asylum request.
First off, Deripaska is a top intermediary or cut out for Russian President Vladimir Putin. Watch the video below: it’s Putin pageantry but it also hints at Deripaska’s deferential role as a facilitator for the Russian president.
Correspondingly, even if Vashukevich does not possess the audio recordings, her position as Deripaska’s mistress and her predilection for keeping her ears open makes her a potential gold mine of information on the workings of the Russian political elite. For contextual analysis alone, Vashukevich’s insights are valuable.
Second, the U.S. has strong grounds to want Vashukevich out of Thailand as soon as possible. Now that Vashukevich is publicly claiming she has forensic information that is highly damaging to Putin and Russian intelligence activities, her life is in danger. If the Russians believe that Vashukevich does have that information, they will find a way to kill her even if it looks like an accident. Indeed, Russians may even have been responsible for getting her arrested in Thailand in the first place, and so time is of the essence here.
Where it suits them to do so, the Russian intelligence services do not hesitate to carry out highly aggressive assassinations on foreign soil. Just look at what happened to Sergei Skripal in Britain on Monday.
And considering the Russian elite’s hypersensitivity to even the most basic scrutiny (both amusing and frightening), Vashukevich’s claims put a target on her head. For all these reasons, U.S. government should utilize its close relationship with the Thai military and get Vashukevich onto U.S. soil as soon as possible.
