Prison service special unit officers stand guard outside Moscow's high-security Lefortovo prison, where convicted Russian arms expert Igor Sutyagin is being held.SERGEI KARPUKHIN
In the biggest spy swap since the Cold War ended, 10 Russians who had lived for years in the United States were put on a flight to Moscow while four Russians, who had spied for Britain and the United States, were being sent west.
"The key provision of the United States-Russia agreement is that the Russian Federation has agreed to release four individuals who are incarcerated in Russia for alleged contact with Western intelligence agencies," the Obama administration said in letter delivered to the New York court that outlined the terms of the trade.
Igor Sutyagin, a Russian arms researcher and scientist convicted of treason and espionage, was apparently the key figure sought by Washington in the trade.
"The Americans must have really wanted this guy," said Bruce Craig, an espionage historian at the University of Prince Edward Island and a member of the Canadian Association for Security and Intelligence Studies. Mr. Craig said the circumstances surrounding the roll-up of the nest of spies ``was rather strange and suggests that a swap was the goal all along."
The swap seems to trade 10 Russians, who apparently never penetrated any U.S. government agencies nor stole anything of value, for four significant Western intelligence assets. Mr. Sutyagin, who spent 11 years in prison and who has always denied being a spy, was identified by his family as being part of the swap.
Early Friday, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree pardoning the four convicted foreign spies so they could be exchanged for the 10 accused spies in the United States.
Pardoned were Russian citizens Mr. Sutyagin, Alexander Zaporozhsky, jailed for 18 years for espionage in 2003, Sergei Skripal, sentenced in 2006 to 13 years jail on charges of spying for Britain, and a fourth named Gennady Vasilenko, the Kremlin statement said.
Mr. Medvedev's spokeswoman Natalia Timakova said in the statement that all four had submitted a plea for pardon admitting their guilt.
In New York, the 10 Russians, several who posed as Canadians, all pleaded guilty to a single charge of failing to register as agents of a foreign power, and were taken by bus Thursday night to JFK airport and flown out of the country. Hours earlier Mr. Sutyagin was taken from a Moscow prison and put on a flight to Vienna.
The U.S. and Russian flights landed in Vienna minutes apart Friday. The maroon-and-white Boeing 767-200 charter carrying the 10 deported Russian agents landed at about 5:15 a.m. ET. Within minutes, it came to a halt behind a Russian Emergencies Ministry plane thought to be carrying the four Russians to be exchanged.
But this swap had none of the drama of foggy, pre-dawn walks across Glienicke Bridge in Berlin and none of the intrigue that cloaked Cold War trades. This wasn't U.S. spy-pilot Gary Powers coming home or Russian dissident Anatoly Shcharansky reaching the West but rather a motley crew of suburban ordinaries who apparently had failed - despite a decade of deep cover - to steal anything.
Meanwhile, mystery shrouds the missing 11th man - Christopher Robert Metsos - the ring's alleged paymaster who was travelling on Canadian documents and disappeared after being arrested in Larnaca, Cyprus. Mr. Craig suggested his disappearance may mean he is actually in the custody of U.S. intelligence agencies and is being interrogated, rather than having eluded police and escaped back to Russia.
The alacrity of the swap and the evident restraint by both the Obama administration and the Russian government indicates "both sides didn't want this to become a big issue," Mr. Craig said.
It wasn't clear whether the Russians being expelled from Russia wanted to leave, and at least one rights group protested.
"If Igor Sutyagin is opposed to this 'deal' and had to accept it under pressure, it may amount to forcible exile," said Nicola Duckworth, Amnesty International's program director for Europe.
The 10 - all arrested June 27 in co-ordinated raids in Boston, New York and Washington after some had been under surveillance in the United States for a decade - "will have to agree to immediate removal," U.S. District Court Judge Kimba Wood said. That means "immediate expulsion from the United States," and they "agree never to attempt to return to the U.S."
Mr. Craig said there could be scores more so-called "illegals," that is spies using elaborately constructed false lives rather than using the more common diplomatic cover. There may be "as many as 50 of these [Russian] illegals in the U.S. and Canada as well," he said.
With reports from Associated Press