Russian operative/Silicon Valley 'investor' Masha Bucher's close ties to both Putin and Epstein.
Last edited Sat Feb 21, 2026, 06:02 PM - Edit history (1)
Jeffrey Epstein is the most famous face in the world right now. And his case, like almost every major American story of the past decade, has been thoroughly checked for Russian connections: Was he a Russian agent? Was the island a Kremlin operation? Was Epstein connected to Vladimir Putin? And if so, how? Aside from several e-mails where Epstein tries to arrange a meeting with the Russian dictator, few things pointed to him passing information to the Russians.
That changed when America found out about Masha Bucher (née Drokova), a Silicon Valley publicist and angel investor from Russia who’s been mentioned in the Epstein files over 1,600 times. The reason Bucher—and her extensive correspondence with Epstein—fueled the “Epstein was working with Moscow” theory isn’t merely because she is Russian-born. It’s because she is Kremlin-bred.
In the mid 2000s, Bucher was the teenage spokesperson for Nashi—roughly translated as “our own”—a Kremlin-sponsored youth movement whose stated goals were to combat Fascism and promote patriotism among millennials. In practice, it was built as an inoculation system against the “color revolutions” that toppled many former Soviet-bloc governments in the 2000s. At 19, Bucher received a medal from Putin for “informational support and active public outreach aimed at developing civil society in the Russian Federation”—Kremlin-speak for outstanding achievement in propaganda. The following year, at a youth forum on Lake Seliger, she kissed Putin on the cheek. Accordingly, the 2011 documentary following her rise through that machine and her eventual disillusionment with it was titled Putin’s Kiss.
In the beginning of the film, Bucher is asked to name the man of her dreams. “It would probably be Putin,” she replies. “He’s a very strong, charismatic, and intelligent man.” (As we now know, Bucher would later write to Epstein in a familiar register: “I trust you a lot. I love your intellect, sense of humor and charisma.”)
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https://airmail.news/issues/2026-2-21/a-master-of-the-dark-arts
For those unfamiliar with Air Mail, it’s a digital magazine from the legendary Graydon Carter (VanityFair).