In Moscow, where she spends four months of the year, Svetlana, 38, runs her own high-end escort agency, with 67 employees. She has a wide circle of clients: middle-class businessmen, successful businessmen, politicians, business executives. She claims to have had sex with Prince Michael of Russia; Anthony Weiner, once a rising star in the Democrat party and now a disgraced New York congressman; and several celebrities.
Her clients pay between £1500 and £8000 per hour and are usually willing to pay for more. Svetlana is outspoken and uncompromising, and refuses to be cowed by the Russian authorities, whom she sees as having no choice but to crack down hard on escorts and those who provide them. She talks about sex with politicians in vivid and frank language that would shock many in her profession. She does not claim to be a stripper. “You don’t strip here!” she says, waving her arms around. “You don’t make love in your underwear for 60 minutes. We make love between the hours of 9 and midnight. There are meetings in Moscow, London, Paris, New York.”
“The United States is the only place in the world where there is such an understanding of this industry”, Svetlana says. “Before, it was a taboo… but now everyone goes on dating websites. There is an understanding and the other countries don’t understand it.”
Many of her clients pay for escort services. Some want to get intimate with her, to be taken to hotels, to be taken home, so they will be able to spend more time together and touch her a lot. Some men, Svetlana claims, prefer a woman to be a “mistress” rather than a lover, for fear that it will be difficult to hide their activities. Many men and women, she says, go to beautiful escorts because they are able to spend huge sums of money. “We don’t even get the same money” she says.
“A massage costs 100 roubles (£2.25) and booking with an escort costs 200 roubles (£8.35). You have to pay for extra services and you have to pay for the hotel as well. If you are doing a massage for £200 and your partner wants to get more of it, you are already paying 600 roubles.
