RUSSIA IS seeking to swap convicted spies for some or all of the 11 so-called deep cover agents accused by the US of spying last month, according to relatives of one such Russian prisoner.
Both Moscow and Washington have been looking for a low-profile resolution of the case. It has amused western audiences with details of the suspects’ bumbling tradecraft and suburban lifestyles, but has been an embarrassment to Russia and has overshadowed a recent thaw in relations between the two countries.
Information about the swap came out after Igor Sutyagin, a Russian scientist convicted of passing nuclear secrets to the US, who is serving a 15-year sentence in a northern Russian work camp, told relatives yesterday he had been told by officials of plans to swap him and other convicted spies for those arrested in the US.
Anna Stavitskaya, Mr Sutyagin’s lawyer, disclosed details of the swap yesterday in an interview with Ekho Moskvy, the Moscow radio station.
She said Mr Sutyagin had been transferred from the prison in Kholmogory, where he was serving his sentence, and brought to Moscow where he met Russian and US officials at Lefortovo prison.
“Igor said that he was being traded for those people who are accused of spying in America,” said Ms Stavitskaya, adding that he was “on a list” of other convicted spies to be traded on a one-to-one basis.
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation last month arrested 10 people on suspicion of spying for Russia, though they have not been charged with stealing secrets, only of working as unregistered agents for a foreign government and, in the case of the detainees, conspiracy to commit money laundering. An 11th alleged spy was arrested in Cyprus but disappeared after being released on bail.
Yesterday the US departments of state and justice declined to comment on Mr Sutyagin. However, the FBI says at least three of the defendants have confessed to using false identities, and two have confessed to being Russian, a sign that discussions with them are bearing fruit. Some US officials have indicated that the FBI’s chief interest was not alleged agents themselves, whom the FBI followed for up to a decade, but their contacts abroad.
In a sign that the administration is seeking to minimise the diplomatic fallout from the affair it has signalled that it has no intention of expelling Russian diplomats because of the case, even though the FBI said a second and a third secretary at the Russian mission to the United Nations were in touch with the defendants.
A trial of these suspected Russian agents could prove highly embarrassing for Russia, and counterproductive for the US, which is seeking to keep relations with Moscow on an upward slope.
US president Barack Obama is already under fire from conservatives for giving too much away to the Kremlin and getting too little in return, and the spy scandal could embolden opponents of the US-Russia “reset”, as the thaw in relations is known. – (Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2010)