From Russia (To Jeffrey), with Love (Craig UNGER) [View all]

Holy cat. Craig Unger pegs the Russia-Epstein angle.



From Russia(to Jeffrey), with Love

The Epstein saga is even more interesting when you look at the Russian women who helped run his operation. Here's a look at Svetlana Pozhidaeva.

Craig Unger
Jul 21, 2025

EXCERPT...

Raised in a Moscow apartment complex built for staffers of the NKVD, the Stalinist precursor of the KGB, Pozhidaeva was educated at the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO), the prestigious academy run by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs that is a training ground for Russian diplomats and intelligence officials. Reputed to be the most elite university in the country, MGIMO has been dubbed the “Harvard of Russia” by Henry Kissinger because it has trained so many figures in Russia’s political, intellectual, and financial elite.

According to the Italian edition of Maxim, Lana gave up a promising tennis career at the age of sixteen to become the youngest freshman at MGIMO, where she graduated with the equivalent of summa cum laude, having mastered, along the way, French, English, Italian, and Spanish, as if she were on course to join the Foreign Ministry.

But then her career took a bizarre turn. Her stellar academic credentials notwithstanding, Pozhidaeva somehow ended up becoming a model who was represented by MC2, a modeling agency owned by Epstein-pimp-to-be Jean-Luc Brunel. Known as “le fantôme” (the ghost), Brunel was the subject of a 1988 piece that aired on CBS’s 60 Minutes in which several young models accused him of drugging their drinks, groping them sexually, and rape. The CBS reporter, Craig Pyes, told Michael Gross. the author of Model: The Ugly Truth of Beautiful Women, that Brunel “ranks among the sleaziest people in the fashion industry. We’re talking about a conveyor belt, not a casting couch. Hundreds of girls were not only harassed but molested.”

SNIP...

“What was most striking about Pozhidaeva was that she had a terrific academic career in Russia and then threw it away on something completely unrelated. She attended, as she says, a top college in Russia, like Stanford in the United States,” said Shvets. “And she was a straight‑­ A student. This is important to understand. She sacrificed four years and then two more years for a master’s degree. It’s an achievement.”

But suddenly after this, Shvets noted, “She says, ‘Fuck it all. Fuck my previous six years. Fuck everything I was doing.’ I mean, it’s­ amazing— it just does not happen in real life.”

“Of course, we know what Epstein was doing with the ladies. But in this particular case,” Shvets told me, “Epstein takes her and introduces her to renowned American and international scientists.”

CONTINUES...

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