Russian Spies Decorated By President Dimitri Medvedev
The Russian president Dimitri Medvedev decorated the Russian spied who were expelled from the United Sates at the beginning of this July. According to the Kremlin spokeswoman, Natalia Timakova, a „ceremony took place on Monday in order to award several members of the SVR (Russian Foreign Intelligence Service) the highest disinctions of the country, including the intelligence agents that worked in the United States until their return to Russia”.
Ten Russian citizens suspected of being part of a espionage network were expelled from the United States at the begining of July, after the Russian president, Dimitri Medvedev, pardoned four Russians convicted for espionage in the benefit of the US. The ten suspects pleaded guilty during a hearing and were then embarked on a bus and taken to a New York airport.
By the position they occupied, the Russian spies are thought to have “planted” a secret software for intercepting and gaining access to programs that would have given Russia a significant access to computer espionage. For example, one of the secret agents, who was arrested for violating the immigration law, worked on testing codes at the most important Microsoft headquarter, in Redmond (Washington). This way he could find any vulnerabilities in the Windows operating system or other programs belonging to Microsoft, vulnerabilities which could help the agents to illegally gain access to computers using that codes. Another agent had a master in Public Policies at Harvard and founded a company that was selling, according to him, a computer program in the decision-making. His system requiered the plans of senior executives, plans which could easily be sent to Moscow.
In excachange for the Russian agents, president Dimitri Medvedev signed the decree to pardon four persons convicted of espionage for the United States- Igor Sutiaghin, Aleksandr Zaprorojski, Ghenadi Vasilenko şi Serghei Skripal. The four asked for pardon and admitted their guilt.
According to a Kremlin source, the exchange of spies was possible only because of the „high level of confidence” between the two countries’ presidents. “This exchange has become possible thanks to a new spirit of the Russian-American relationship and a high level of trust between the two countries’ presidents, a trust no one will be able to shake”, said the cited source. Moreover, president Medvedev took into account the fact that the accused had already served important convictions. „Sutiaghin was in prison for 11 years, Zaporojski served a sentence of nearly nine years and Skripal, five and a half years”, Medvedev mentioned at the time.
As for the United States, their officials said that the exchange was dictated by humanitarian as well as well as national security reasons. They mentioned that the detention of ten Russian secret agents did not have any strategic interest. “The exchange was decided in order to resolve the case quickly as well as for national security and humanitarian reasons,” said a spokesman for the State Department, Mark Toner.
The exchange took place in Viena and, according to some sources, it was negociated at the highest rank by the directors of the American and Russian intelligence services. Leon Panetta, the director of CIA, and an anonymous Moscow official met and arranged the exchange. From Viena, the Russian spies flew to Moscow, while the four agents released from Russia were taken to a British air force base in Oxfordshire in southern Britain, but their final destination remains unknown.
This was not the first exchange of secret agents between Russia and the United States. On February the 10th 1962, after spending five years in prison in the United States, one of the most notorious Soviet spies, William Fischer, aka Rudolf Abel, is exchanged for the American Francis Gary Powers. Powers was the pilot of a U-2 spy plane shot down by a Soviet missile in 1960, during a reconnaissance flight over the USSR. The exchange took place on the Glienicke bridge, the famous “bridge of spies” that separated western Berlin by the East German city of Potsdam. Born in Germany, Fischer went to the USSR in 1920, and seven years later he entered the NKVD, the forerunner of the KGB. Sent to New York in 1948, he gathered confidential documents about the American security, posing as a photographer. Arrested in 1957, he was sentenced to 30 years in prison for espionage.
Some 25 years later another Soviet- American exchange took place. On September the 29th 1986, the Soviet officials announced the expulsion of U.S. journalist Nicholas Daniloff, arrested for espionage a month before. The next day, Gennady Zakharov, Soviet UN official, received the order to leave the United States within 24 hours after appearing for five minutes before a New York court. Zakharov was arrested in August by the FBI in the New York subway, while receiving military documents. Moscow responded by arresting Daniloff. This case has triggered a real crisis between Washington and Moscow, which resulted in a series of expulsions of diplomats by both sides.
On February the 11th 1986, after nine years in prison, the Soviet dissident Anatoly is freed by the USSR in an important East-West swap. Şcearansky was arrested for espionage in 1977 and, despite the fact that he constantly denied the allegations, was sentenced to 13 years in prison, including nine years in a camp. A vast international campaign for his freedom took palce and finally he was released.
