Was Zelensky’s Israeli consigliere Timur Mindich trying to sexually entrap Donald Trump? And is the western-funded opposition to Zelensky actually getting paid tens of thousands of dollars a month by Zelensky’s cartoonishly corrupt friends, on condition that the ‘opposition’ continues agitating for endless war and mobilization of all genders aged over 18?
The recently released ‘Mindich Files’ are filled with rather crass, and, frankly, hideous men. However, there are also two interesting women in the latest wiretapped conversations between members of Zelensky’s shadow elite. One is the mysterious ‘Masha’. And in another, Zelensky’s under-boss Timur Mindich discusses with defense minister Umerov who should be the new ambassador to the US — Mindich proposes sending a ‘curly redhead’ to satisfy the ‘old man’.
The two stories reveal a great deal.
With the story of ‘Masha’, it turns out that the shrill ‘anti-corruption activists’ and morally upright NGO leaders funded by western governments for decades are not quite as rigidly principled as they present themselves. The only things that really matter for them are money and continued war (the former depends on the latter).
It turns out that their ‘principled criticism’ of government corruption simply has the aim of forcing the oligarchs in power to send them a monthly tribute. And if there’s one thing that the likes of Masha and Mindich can agree on, it is the need for the war to continue. Both have profited immensely from it.
As for the ‘redhead’ Mindich wanted to send to Washington as ambassador for the pleasure of the ‘old man’, there are two important things to note. One, of course, is that Mindich, a ‘private businessman’ and old friend of Zelensky’s, is determining ministerial appointments. The other, of course, is the rather unsavoury indication that Mindich, who lives in Israel and likely only has Israeli citizenship, is interested in sexually entrapping the president of the USA.
After all, Mindich and his friend do boast to one another that this ‘curly girl’ will ‘drive the old man crazy’. We’ll also look at a number of other recent cases of stunning young women of questionable repute given state office in Ukraine.
Masha
So, Masha.
This figure appeared in the Mindich tapes released on April 28, 2026, by the western-funded Ukrainska Pravda. In this section of the tapes, Defense Minister Rustem Umerov was talking with Timur Mindich in July 2025, discussing about how some kind of ‘Masha’ is driving him crazy. Mindich needs to send another monthly 20 thousand dollars for her to calm down.
The context in the first section is an upcoming trip to the UAE to lobby for Emirati investments in the drone company Fire Point, which is secretly controlled by Mindich.
Umerov: I’m going to the UAE, Masha drove me crazy. No, I’m going to Rome with them, to meet Americans.
Mindich: And you return Friday?
Umerov: For one day. The UAE president for three weeks already will have the minister with whom I placed this Masha.….
Mindich: [My friend] says for that for three, he’ll kill the motherland, go to trenches. You know how much Igor gets? 50. What is that, 50? Masha 20, Ira 50.
Umerov: You already pay Masha?
Mindich: I want to agree with her. She pushed Defense City through and will go to UAE.
Umerov: I just spoke so harshly with her, I said: “You don’t finish shit, always in process, why I asked, I said, fuck, it’s just hard for me to tell you, I can’t be fucked with these ideas, why the fuck are you starting beautiful things…
The identities of ‘Ira’ and ‘Igor’ are fairly easy to guess. Igor would be Igor Shmelev, the formal co-owner of Fire Point, and Ira would be Irina Terekh, the company’s CEO.
Defence City, meanwhile, is a special legal and economic regime finalized by the Ukrainian government in January 2026. It guarantees tax exemptions and simplified regulations for military producers.
But who is this ‘Masha’ that’s been receiving 20 thousand dollars a month in return for pushing through Defense City? A woman who, despite her aid in this respect, also deeply annoys Umerov?
When Ukrainska Pravda released these latest leaks last week, they read out that it ‘likely refers to Maria Berlinskaya, one of the key figures behind the Defense Tech Cluster Defense City project.’
Ukrainska Pravda read out this clarification from the original transcript of the NABU (National Anti-Corruption Bureau of Ukraine), the institution that wiretapped Mindich and his friends to begin with. Generally Ukrainska Pravda is very strongly pro-NABU, though that is also sometimes complex (and not today’s topic).
Anyway, keep that in mind — even according to the EU/USAID/Soros-founded NABU, Berlinska is the one getting 20 thousand dollars a month from Mindich. Sorosite friendly fire.
For their part, Ukrainska Pravda tries to say later in the video that this ‘Masha’ isn’t Berlinska, but someone else. A very rare case of them going against the NABU.
But that’s because Ukrainska Pravda and Berlinska belong to the same class — the so-called ‘Sorosites’, the Ukrainian NGOs and journalists that have made their career on funds from George Soros’s Open Society Foundation (the Renaissance Foundation in Ukraine), USAID, and now the EU. They are fanatically pro-war, but also often have arrangements with the government to provide them with exemption from mobilization. As long as the war continues, they continue getting grants, and are far more politically influential than would be in peacetime — Sorosite parties struggle to get 5% of the electorate.
The NABU is also largely part of this Sorosite class, but it’s a bit less simple with them. I’ll write an upcoming article about the very interesting conflict going on at the moment between four factions, which are sometimes allied, sometimes at each other’s throats: Mindich, Zelensky, the NABU, and the Sorosites.
The life of Masha
In any case, Berlinska is the embodiment of the Sorosite class. From 2014 to 2022, she combined feminist NGO activism with various sorts of militarist activities regarding drones and female soldiers. In 2019, the US embassy in Kyiv included her in an exhibit paying tribute to 19 Ukrainian and 29 American outstanding women.
Note that the US embassy described her as a veteran of the ‘Anti-Terrorist Operation’ in eastern Ukraine.
Indeed, Berlinska claims to have volunteered in the ‘Aidar’ battalion for a few weeks when the war was raging in 2014. This unit is well-known for the war crimes it committed at this times against civilians. Berlinska’s time in Aidar was glorified by just about every Ukrainian television channel at the time, presenting her as a heroic young law student that had become a masterful drone operator at the frontlines, flown over enemy lines on a reconnaissance mission, and even engaged in gunfire combat with enemy troops.
However, an actual commander in Aidar told journalists in 2015 that not only did Berlinska lie about her combat experience, but that her publicly shared footage helped the enemy shell Ukrainian positions. He also denied that she had the call-sign ‘Marie Curie’, as television reports pompously claimed.
During one of the first missions in early September, she and her cousin Oleksii crashed a drone. It was later found 300 meters from the launch point. Most likely they simply failed to calibrate it to return. While I was in Kyiv, I ordered them to retrieve two drones — one for repairs and another for modernisation. They did not carry out the order. A few days later Masha was in Kyiv. We met there, and she told me she wanted to continue cooperating as a fundraising volunteer.
While she was in Kyiv, the battalion commander once asked for office equipment to be ordered. Masha and I coordinated everything: what needed to be ordered and what did not. When I returned, I was informed that besides the agreed items, she had ordered three additional unnecessary aircraft. She managed to push this idea through because she had already “promoted” herself online. She presented herself to the battalion commander as a specialist, although she is not one.
In that famous video she filmed from the cockpit of a flying plane, they really were fired upon.
But it did not even resemble reconnaissance. It resembled espionage. She could clearly see that the pilot’s main camera was not working. Yet at the moment of the shelling, Masha films the ceiling instead of the firing positions. That is why we cannot see where the shooting is coming from. And when she and the pilot return, Masha points out where our police academy is, where our base is located. This was in Shchastia. Our group had to leave immediately afterward. Once this video appeared online, shelling of the positions where our men were stationed began almost immediately. Even positions that had previously been untouched came under fire.
We never had a callsign “Marie Curie” for anyone. Nobody called Berlinska that. At most — Masha.
One of the fighters, Misha Boroda, once called me and said he had found an article where Masha described taking part in combat. Supposedly it happened on a bridge. Misha said: “If she fired at all, she would have been firing into my back. She never crossed to the Donets side where the fighting was happening. She stayed on this side.”
At one point I was told: “The ‘Pluses’ [Kolomoisky’s 1+1 television channel, the same company Zelensky worked for — EIU] are coming, they’re filming a documentary about us,” and I was asked to cooperate. Supposedly Masha had organized it. What did “1+1” do? The segment in “Brave Hearts” was edited in such a way that it creates the impression that Masha is operating the drone. But in reality it was Oksana, one of our fighters. Masha is not operating it — she is merely standing nearby.
Once she provoked a shooting incident between our own fighters. Masha frequently violated discipline. One time she and Oleksii were drinking with the “blacks” [a grouping within Aidar Battalion]. At four in the morning, while drunk, they were walking through the base territory and the sentry reprimanded them. They did not like that, and a fight broke out. Since the sentry was sober, Oleksii ended up getting beaten. Masha got caught up in it too. They complained to the “blacks,” and those people started shooting. Nobody was wounded; the bullets only hit windows and walls.
During her third visit she immediately went to the “blacks.” They asked her to provide aerial reconnaissance data. Without saying anything to me, Masha told them that we were refusing to provide the data. A conflict arose. The battalion commander called me and asked why we were refusing to share information. But that was false, because we provide aerial reconnaissance assistance not only to the Aidar Battalion. After that, the battalion commander said Masha would work in Kyiv. She now has no connection whatsoever to aerial reconnaissance.
Following the release of this article by the well-connected journalist Arkadiy Babchenko, Berlinska stopped calling herself a ‘veteran’ (though not always, as the awards from the US embassy showed). Her main identity became that of a ‘military fundraiser’. A very similar story to the repulsive Sergey Sternenko, who she is a sort of female version of.
Like Sternenko’s claims of ‘bad vision’ preventing him from fighting, she also began walking about with a cane, claiming that she was beaten by riot police during the 2013-4 euromaidan. The question obviously arises as to how she was able to participate in the war a few months later, but anyway.
After 2022, she rose to much more prominence, and never stops telling state television interviewers that the forced mobilization age needs to be lowered to 18, women should be taken too, that everyone needs to make drones in her kitchen, and so on and on. And naturally, she simply despises draft dodgers. She also recently called to continue the war for ‘at least 12-15 years’ by ‘militarizing society’ and drafting women. After all, she’s such a battle-hardened warrior herself. Forbes Ukraine named her among its 50 female leaders in 2023.
She was also responsible for a Russian missile strike that killed quite a few civilians in Chernigov in 2023 because of her unwise idea to enthusiastically advertise her upcoming drone conference. Zelensky’s former chief of staff Andrey Bogdan, currently out of favour and in Austria, recently claimed that Berlinska had to become a government informant following the Chernigov incident to avoid criminal prosecution. She had to agree to defend the government line in all situations. Though to be honest, I somewhat doubt that she needs much encouragement to cheerlead for more war.
For the Chernigov incident and her general insufferable demeanor, Berlinska is not the most popular person in the army. Azovite nationalists, for instance, despise her (being a feminist that is probably Jewish doesn’t help). But she is very good at getting western grant-donors to like her, which is what matters.
Berlinska big wartime project has been ‘Victory Drones’, which boasts of training tens, even hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian civilians to assemble drones at home. Obviously, this also makes residential buildings a target for Russian air strikes, but what does that matter.
And because of her incredible enthusiasm for war, Zelensky even personally awarded her with a ‘Golden Heart’ medal in 2024. Berlinska likes to make dramatic social media posts about how ‘the army must reform or we will collapse!’, but this certainly does not mean some kind of offensive against the corrupt elite. She just wants for her and her Sorosite friends to get a cut of the pie, as the latest Mindich tapes show quite well. ‘Reforms’ mean giving Berlinska and co more lucrative sinecures.
Masha’s response
Berlinska, of course, has been furiously denying the allegations that she received 20k a month from Mindich and Umerov. However, her ‘defense’ is filled with so many lies, contradictions, and open support for Timur Mindich, that it simply cemented my belief that she is indeed the ‘Masha’ of the Mindich Files.
She claims, for instance, that she never had anything to do with Defence City. One can reply, to begin with, that the Mindich tapes show quite well that no one who gets anything done in Ukraine does so officially, or in the open. The NABU also claims that she did in fact play a major role in Defence City.
Second of all, Berlinska does indeed have a long history of involvement in simplifying regulations for defense contractors, which is precisely what Defence City is all about. Forbes wrote that it was thanks to Berlinska’s lobbying in the ministry of defense that ‘Ukraine has abolished warranty letters, customs duties, and VAT on drones, and the customs service has stopped considering UAVs as dual-use goods.’
And it makes quite a lot of sense that Umerov and Berlinska would have a complex relationship. Umerov also comes from the world of USAID/Soros grants, and was originally appointed defense minister in 2023. Anti-corruption organizations allied with Berlinska wrote florid texts proclaiming that ‘Umerov’s appointment will be Zelensky’s best decision ever’, and a number of Sorosites were given advisory positions in the ministry of defense. I’ll also note that there were rumours at the time that the Americans even wanted Berlinska herself to become minister of defense.
However, Umerov grew closer and closer to Yermak and the Zelensky Family, booting the Sorosites out of the Ministry by early 2025. This coincided with a massive media campaign against Umerov by the Sorosites. Berlinska in particular co-wrote a number of hit-pieces in the western-funded press.
But the fact that Berlinska yelled about Umerov in the press doesn’t exclude getting paid by him and his cronies. The Sorosites simply want to be given grants and influential positions. Umerov/Mindich continued the grants, partly because under the pressure of said media campaign. Good work from Masha, as usual.
Anyway, I listened to Berlinska try to defend herself from the allegations in a video released a few days ago by Ukrainska Pravda.
It was extremely unconvincing. If you translate the top comments, you’ll also see that even these liberal nationalist viewers are not convinced by Berlinska’s denials.
I have to say, this was one of the hardest listens I’ve done in a while. Probably even harder than five hours listening to White Rex talking about Hitler, Goebbels and Darth Vader. Berlinska’s insufferably condescending voice, whispering for dramatic effect, gave never-ending, pathos-laden answers to every question.
For instance, in the new Mindich tapes, defense minister Umerov says:
No, no, I told her: “Masha, what do you want at the end of your life?” She couldn’t answer.
When asked about this line, Berlinska goes on and on about her metaphysical, religious answer to this question. According to her, it’s Umerov that has no answer to this question, not her. Explaining this takes her about 5 minutes, and I won’t subject you to it. I much prefer reading Mindich and his friends swear and joke among each other.
Her big argument is that she couldn’t have been paid by Umerov, because she constantly criticized him and demanded his resignation as Defense Minister. Well, the dialogue clearly shows Umerov saying that ‘Masha is driving me crazy’, which is why he needs to keep paying her 20 thousand a month.
It seems rather clear that Berlinska’s tactic has been to criticize the government, protected from repression by her western contacts, extorting sizable payments from the ‘corrupt officials’ in exchange, and continued state contracts for her military NGOs. I’ll also note that there have been accusations from figures close to Umerov that the anti-corruption organs close to Berlinska have been lobbying the interests of American military enterprises.
Anyway, Berlinska spends much of the interview haughtily criticizing her journalist colleagues for caring so much about corruption. In her opinion, Fire Point makes excellent drones, and if there are some corrupt people there, well, in her words ‘such people in our society actually truly believe they are helping the country, you need to understand their mentality’. And after all, critics aren’t ‘in the drone sector’, and hence have no right to comment.
One of Berlinska’s most annoying verbal tics is constantly referring to the ‘opinion of the sector’, as in drone manufacturers. She believes herself to be uniquely in tune with the desires of the mystical ‘sector’, and repeats this word an entire 20 times (just as much money as Mindich paid her monthly, just in tens of thousands of dollars). Recall, by the way, that despite her immense militaristic pathos, Berlinska has never served in the army.
Otherwise, Berlinska’s ‘defense’ is filled with rather obvious lies.
One of her favorite lines is that no one calls her ‘Masha’, so Umerov and Mindich mustn’t have been talking about her.
But as you’ll recall, she is indeed called ‘Masha’ regularly in the 2015 article about her by the Aidar commander. And this claim that no one calls her Masha seems rather contradicted by the Facebook name she chose for herself. Needless to say, ‘Masher’ is a funny way to say ‘Masha’ (the nickname ‘Masher’ does not exist in Ukrainian or Russian).
Having decided to lie about her involvement with Mindich, Berlinska makes up the following truly remarkable tale:
Berlinska: After the full-scale invasion began, I returned here in 2022 with a single purpose, despite having an extremely comfortable life in the United States — a family, a home, and a well-paid job. I worked as a program director for an international organization, and our family also had a business. Everything was going well.
Host: Twenty thousand a month?
Berlinska: Actually, considerably more than that.
But once the fire started here, my family and I redirected all of our money, along with funds from our friends and businesses, toward Ukraine. In 2022 alone, we sent tens of millions of dollars here to help put out the fire.
To begin with, it is rather remarkable that an NGO director could earn $20,000 USD. Such incomes in the non-profit sector are reserved for quite high-level UN officials, which Berlinska was most certainly not. If Berlinska was indeed earning that much money at an NGO, then clearly Trump wasn’t all the at wrong to rail against the corruption of the sector.
However, there’s a much larger problem with her story. According to the Wikipedia page about Berlinska, she spent all of the 2014-22 period in Ukraine, trying (and failing) to volunteer in the army, and mainly producing films about patriotic women in the armed forces. She did create a large, EU-funded NGO, the Institute of Gender Programs, which focused on issues faced by women in the army. But the Ukrainian army, not the American.
So it’s rather unclear what she means about earning more than 20,000 dollars a year while living in the USA. I get the feeling that she simply feels no need to have any relationship with the truth. That’s not what she’s paid for.
What she is paid for, whether by Mindich or the EU, is to cheer lead for more war. And through her ‘Victory Drones’ NGO, she can get an enviable cut of the drone bonanza.
For instance, at one point in the Ukrainska Pravda discussion, the host Mikhailo Tkach makes the reasonable point that Zelensky and his cronies have no interest in ending the war, given how lucrative it is for them.
The idea that this is a corrupt war waged for profit enrages Berlinska. She reminds the audience that the war must continue until Russia disintegrates.
This is not about the war continuing because people are profiting from it. And war is not the only way for them to make money. They’ll profit from something regardless.
What can they make money from? Exports, reconstruction — anything. If the war ends, they’ll still be making money. That’s not the issue.
The issue is that the war will not end. The war against us is permanent, until Russia collapses. Or until Russia, together with our internal enemies — those who are here in Ukraine, so to speak, on assignment and pursuing somewhat different goals — succeeds in destroying Ukraine.
Convenient, for Mindich and Berlinska. After listening to her ‘defense’, I was even more convinced than before that ‘Masha’ was indeed Berlinska. Or even if it wasn’t her (though the NABU certainly thinks so), she is certainly just as interested as Mindich in continuing the war indefinitely, and is suspiciously vigorous in her defense of Fire Point.
By the way, Mindich’s drone behemoth Fire Point seems to fund a number of ‘critical liberal voices’. For instance, Fire Point fully funds the education and accomodation of students on a new engineering scholarship at the ultra-neoliberal Kyiv School of Economics.
KSE’s dean Timofiy Milovanov is one of the most visible English-language Ukrainains on Twitter.
He presents himself as a liberal crusader against corruption, but he was in fact advisor to Mindich’s friend Andrey Yermak from 2020 to 2021. Note also that Milovanov was in the observer council of Ukroboronprom, Ukraine’s state defense concern, until the Mindich scandal of November 2025 forced him to leave.
Needless to say, Berlinska often takes time from her busy schedule to give lectures at the KSE.
A redhead for the Old Man
Now, onto our second woman. She has a rather more stylish hairstyle than Masha does, and seemingly a much more active amorous life. Now we get into some content restricted for true EiU fans only.
