Kristina Puzyreva, 32 years old, a Canadian of Russian origin has just pleaded guilty in federal court in Brooklyn for conspiring with her husband to illegally export electronic components from Montreal intended for the Russian Armed Forces, violating American sanctions against Moscow.
Evidence filed in court shows that some of these parts were found in Russian drones, missiles and helicopters captured or shot down in Ukraine. Puzyreva faces 20 years in prison. Her husband, Nikolay Goltsev, and an accomplice, Salimdzhon Nasriddinov, have not yet been tried.
She received more than 150 packages at her Montreal address from American companies over a period of about five years, prosecutors said. According to the United States Department of Homeland Security, the three accomplices made more than 300 illegal shipments worth approximately CAN$10 million. American agents seized approximately US$1.68 million from bank accounts linked to the trio.
- Listen to the Lester-Durocher meeting with Journal de Montréal blogger Normand Lester via QUB :
Another unsolved “Russian” riddle
This is reminiscent of another mysterious case, this time involving a 33-year-old Russian-speaking Ukrainian from Montreal, Inna Yaschyshyn. She posed as Anna de Rothschild, a member of the illustrious family, to gain access to Trump at Mar-a-Lago, and had herself photographed with him at his golf course in May 2021. She resided in Montreal where she chaired a charity organization, Les Cœurs unis de la merci, suspected of being a front to conceal illicit activities.
In a sworn statement at the Montreal courthouse, Inna Yaschyshyn claimed to have been under the influence of a Russian based in Quebec and Florida, Valeriy Tarasenko. The man will be the victim in October 2022 of an assassination attempt by firearm outside the Estérel hotel complex in the Laurentians. Even today, the SQ refuses to make any comments in relation to this matter. Nothing is known about the FBI investigation either. Mystery and gumdrop!
- Listen to the Lester-Durocher meeting with Journal de Montréal blogger Normand Lester via QUB :
Montreal and Canada: Russian “nests of spies”
On several occasions, Russian spies without diplomatic cover – illegals, in professional parlance – have operated in Canada. I am devoting a series of podcasts to it on QUB radio.
• The KGB brought a pair of spies into Canada in the 1980s under the names Tracey Foley and Donald Heathfield, identities stolen from Canadian children who died as infants.
• In 1996, the RCMP and CSIS accused another couple, Ian Mackenzie Lambert and Laurie Brodie, of being Russian spies also usurping the identities of children buried in cemeteries in Montreal and Toronto.
• In November 2006, an illegal Russian spy was arrested at Dorval airport while leaving for the Balkans. He had lived for more than 10 years in Montreal under his false Canadian identity, Paul William Hampel.
• A Russian spy currently detained in Norway spent years in Canada after establishing his false identity in Brazil – José Assis Giammaria – Mikhail Mikouchine moved to Canada, where Ottawa’s Carleton University awarded him in 2015 a baccalaureate in political science. He then earned a master’s degree from the University of Calgary.