Drokova's proposal, sent on July 9, 2017, recommended that Epstein rebuild his public image after his first conviction by positioning himself as a patron of science and women's rights. Among other ideas, she advised creating a scientific award and a foundation against harassment that would, in her words, give Epstein "access to a huge pool of ambitious women" whom he could "hire for himself or partners".
An Explainer review of Epstein's internal correspondence and corporate records indicates that this plan was not only accepted but implemented. Epstein set up a company fronted by Maria's younger sister, Viktoria, which ran a women-focused project tightly connected to MGIMO — the Moscow State Institute of International Relations run by Russia's Foreign Ministry. Both sisters continued to pursue political and business interests in Russia, despite Maria's later public claims that she had "cut ties" with the country. After her stint with Epstein, Viktoria went on to a lucrative career with a firm owned by Kremlin-linked billionaire Alexander Abramov, co-owner of the steel and mining giant Evraz.
"Just an amateur in science"
Within a month of offering herself as Epstein's PR strategist, Maria Drokova put him in touch with Jeffrey Mervis, a writer for the journal Science. The result was an interview in which Epstein tried to recast himself as a "billionaire patron of science".
Mervis later recalled that Epstein oscillated between modesty — "I'm just an amateur in science" — and boasting: "But I understand money, I'm a pretty good mathematician". Some of his views, Mervis said, seemed contradictory or grounded in outdated, discredited ideas.
Soon afterward, Epstein moved to another key item on Drokova's list: creating a women's organization. In 2018, a year before his second arrest and subsequent death in jail, he launched WE (Women Empowerment) Talks. Publicly, the project was marketed as a "safe space" for women entrepreneurs, promising monthly events, high-profile speakers, and hubs in New York, Portugal and Moscow.
Behind the branding, internal emails released by the U.S. Justice Department and reviewed by Explainer show that WE Talks was also used to identify "talented young women" and help them gain admission to prestigious Russian and European universities — while keeping Epstein closely involved in their careers and personal trajectories.
Svetlana (Lana) Pozhidaeva — founder of WE Talks, registered by Epstein's attorney at his foundation's address.
Russian staff inside Epstein's office
The WE Talks brand was owned by WE TALKS ENTERPRISES LLC, registered in New York in August 2018 by Darren Indyke, Epstein's personal attorney. Indyke filed the trademark and paid the first invoices, totaling $3,024. The company shared a Lexington Avenue address with Epstein's main philanthropic vehicle, the Jeffrey Epstein VI Foundation.
Day-to-day operations were run by two former students of MGIMO: Svetlana ("Lana") Pozhidaeva — described by the Dossier Center as an assistant to Epstein — and 32-year-old Viktoria Drokova, Maria's younger sister. On LinkedIn, Viktoria lists two milestones: completing a master's degree in law at MGIMO in 2016, and serving as a co-founder of WE Talks until September 2020.
Pozhidaeva had been working with Epstein for years. Flight records show her traveling first class with him to Paris in April–May 2014 on tickets costing around $19,000.
First-class Air France tickets for Epstein and Pozhidaeva (New York–Paris, April 29 – May 8, 2014). Document from U.S. Department of Justice files.
Department of Justice (DOJ)
Epstein received operational reports from Pozhidaeva, forwarded WE Talks event announcements to his own contacts, and personally suggested potential speakers. By August 2018, shortly after the company was created, he was already inviting business partners to speak to audiences of "180 women" assembled through WE Talks. By the end of that year, events were also being held in Russia.
Internal documents show at least five documented WE Talks events by April 2019. These included the WE Pitch startup contest in New York on November 27, 2018, where participants had five minutes to present to a jury of venture capitalists, among them Anu Duggal (Female Founders Fund) and Heather Hartnett (Human Ventures), for a $10,000 prize.
For the Moscow conference, WE Talks Russia, held on April 17, 2019, organizers prepared especially carefully. Pozhidaeva reported 300 confirmed registrations and "hundreds" more on the waiting list. The Russian edition of Forbes provided promotional support.
Photos from the launch show Viktoria Drokova and Svetlana (Lana) Pozhidaeva hosting what was essentially a private club for Moscow's female elite. According to an interview Pozhidaeva gave to The Voice magazine in 2019, "more than 100 women" attended the first Moscow meeting; all seats were gone within two days, and registration closed a month before the event.
Guests included Alina Kryukova, wife of actor Konstantin Kryukov (known for the film "The 9th Company"), and Anastasia Shvetsova, wife of rapper Natan and a former business partner of Maria Drokova at a PR studio. The event was moderated by Anastasia Karpova, then deputy editor-in-chief of Forbes Russia. Little is publicly known about a second WE Talks Russia meeting that was tentatively planned for Moscow.
Lana Pozhidaeva (far left) with the jury and winner of the WE Pitch 2018 pitch session.
A "sugardaddy professor" at MGIMO
At the same time, Epstein was cultivating relationships with MGIMO, as well as with France's Sorbonne and Sciences Po, presenting himself as a mentor for future diplomats. Female students wrote to him as to a "sugardaddy professor," asking for tuition support — sometimes up to €40,000 — and help securing jobs at the United Nations or in foreign ministries.
MGIMO occupies a unique position in Russia's political system. It is run by the Foreign Ministry and has produced a large share of the current Putin-era elite, including Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, former Culture Minister Vladimir Medinsky, politician and media personality Ksenia Sobchak, and presidential aide Yuri Ushakov. During the war in Ukraine, MGIMO also played a role in Moscow's information operations: the university hosted a "fake-news factory" designed to push pro-Kremlin narratives in Western media, as Explainer has previously reported.
Justice Department files contain detailed profiles of at least five women directly linked to MGIMO, plus references to others in their circle.
One student, who introduced herself as Masha Pusakova, applied for a joint Sciences Po–MGIMO program aimed at preparing candidates for diplomatic roles at the UN. She sent Epstein photos of her friends, including "Anna," whom he rejected as having "too many tattoos," and "Aurora," who had passed a demanding French bar exam and taught law. Explainer was unable to independently verify the identities behind these first names.
One student, who introduced herself as Masha Pusakova, says she failed to get into Cornell University and is therefore applying to the Sciences Po–MGIMO program aimed at diplomatic roles at the UN. "I want to get a double degree so that I can (hopefully!) work in Franco-Russian diplomacy/represent my country at the UN and other international organizations. Perhaps law is not for me, but diplomacy is more to my liking!" — she wrote in March 2013. In the same letter, Pusakova offers to help Epstein with admissions for her friends — Anna (whom Epstein rejected saying "too many tattoos") and Aurora, who passed a difficult French bar exam and taught law. The letter includes their photographs. Explainer could not verify the names of these women.
A 23-year-old law student at the Sorbonne (name unknown) failed twice to get into Ivy League universities and ultimately enrolled in a dual master's program run by MGIMO and the University of Geneva. She asked Epstein to mentor her and to provide a scholarship of 40,000 Swiss francs.
Another student described MGIMO as "an excellent school for representing Russia at the UN" and mentioned three other women who "wanted to meet [Epstein] but got scared after googling him".
Fast-track career and oligarch money
Viktoria Drokova completed her MGIMO master's degree in 2016. By her second year she was already driving a BMW X3. A month before graduation she made an eight-day trip to New York. Three weeks after returning to Russia, she and two partners — including her future husband Dmitry Biryukov — registered a company called "CRIMEA BOOKING" at an address on Vernadsky Prospekt in Moscow, the same address as Maria Drokova's apartment. The firm built booking databases for accommodation in occupied Crimea but was dissolved in January 2017.
Viktoria Drokova — MGIMO graduate and co-founder of WE Talks together with Lana Pozhidaeva.
Viktoria Drokova's Facebook
According to her LinkedIn profile, Viktoria worked as a lawyer at OMA Family — the PR firm associated with Maria Drokova — in the U.S. between April 2017 and August 2018. Russian tax data suggest that over the same period she was also on the payroll of Web Logistika LLC (May–October 2017), which operated the freight platform Deliver and counted Kremlin-aligned billionaire Alexander Mamut and Maxim Vorobyov, brother of the Moscow region's governor, among its investors.
Pitch decks obtained by The Washington Post show Maria Drokova presenting Mamut as one of the key investors in her venture capital firm Day One Ventures, set up in late 2017.
Viktoria joined Epstein's WE Talks project in February 2019 and worked there until September 2020. Leaked documents suggest that after that she returned to Moscow and resumed a business career in Russia.
From February to November 2021, she was employed by Invest AG LLC, earning about 312,500 rubles a month (3.75 million rubles per year). Her total income from this employer reached 3,792,358 rubles, including 120,118 rubles in unused vacation pay and a 622,500-ruble severance bonus.
Invest AG is the personal investment vehicle of two sanctioned Russian billionaires: Alexander Abramov (roughly 66.7%) and Alexander Frolov (about 33.3%), co-owners of Evraz. Both are under EU and U.S. sanctions for supporting Vladimir Putin's regime.
By the end of 2024, Invest AG's assets stood at 43.2 billion rubles, with net profit of 3.3 billion rubles.
Among the company's minority shareholders is Sergey Bratukhin, a venture investor who previously served as president of Invest AG before moving to New York. Bratukhin sat on the board of Norilsk Nickel as a representative of Roman Abramovich's Millhouse until April 2022.
Millions on the market
Salary was not Viktoria Drokova's main source of income. She traded actively on the stock market through several brokers. In 2021, her trading income exceeded 62 million rubles — 16 times her annual salary.
Brokerage statements show that she earned 39.9 million rubles via BCS, mainly by trading Moscow Exchange shares (29.3 million rubles), plus 9.2 million on currency and commodity derivatives and 1.4 million on options and futures. Through Tinkoff Bank she earned another 22.6 million rubles, including a single March 2021 trade worth 12.9 million rubles in equities, as well as 3.7 million from short-term repo operations and other derivatives. The scale of her activity and use of complex instruments suggest professional-level trading or management of significant capital.
By contrast, her bank deposits in 2021 were modest — about 1 million rubles. She earned 28,638 rubles in interest from Alfa-Bank and 30,704 from Tinkoff, together less than 2% of her annual income. Where the remaining tens of millions went is unclear.
In 2022, her trading income at Tinkoff collapsed to 499,019 rubles — 125 times less than the year before. Bank deposits fell from about 1 million rubles to roughly 75,000 (interest payments of 2,272 rubles from Alfa-Bank and 4,157 from Tinkoff).
The downturn coincided with Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine and the imposition of sanctions on Russian oligarchs and their structures, including Abramov, Frolov and Abramovich.
Losing millions and leaving Russia
Viktoria Drokova married Dmitry Biryukov, a graduate of the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology (molecular physics), in 2016. The couple has two children.
Since May 2018, Viktoria, Dmitry and their daughter have jointly owned — in equal one-third shares — a high-end Moscow apartment of 120.4 square meters on Sergeiukhovsky Val Street, as well as several parking spaces. A decade earlier, in 2008, Biryukov was a student from Russia's Ryazan region posting job ads as an SAP HR consultant, seeking 40,000 rubles a month.
Maria (left) and Viktoria Drokova in the film "Kiss Putin" (2011).
Between 2018 and 2022, the couple's travel appears relatively modest: they bought tickets together to Sochi (2018), Anapa (2021) and Kaliningrad (2021). Official records show Viktoria leaving Invest AG on November 30, 2021.
On March 7, 2023, Viktoria's Mercedes was involved in a car accident with Dmitry Biryukov at the wheel, who was found at fault. Registration and insurance records list Viktoria as the vehicle's owner and policyholder.
Border-control data show her last recorded departure from Russia as a trip to Turkey on September 16, 2023. There is no record of her return. She stopped sharing details of her life on social media in 2021.
Despite public statements about breaking with Russia, Maria Drokova has also maintained close ties to Russian business and politics, as we have detailed here.
Epstein, meanwhile, appears to have followed developments in Russian diplomacy with interest. Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov's name appears more than 140 times in the Justice Department files. As "We Can Explain" (Mozhem Obyasnit) has previously reported, Epstein's email cache also contained CVs for Maxim Churkin - son of the late Russian UN ambassador Vitaly Churkin - and Roman Chukov, an aide to the head of the state-run Roscongress Foundation. Both men are MGIMO graduates.
