Mount Blade Defeat Faction

Moscow and Washington will share their spies

Article published in Le Figaro, 9 July 2010.

From yesterday, a Russian scientist accused of helping the CIA, was transferred Vienna.

ESPIONAGE Moscow and Washington want to get it over with the scandal that rocks the bilateral relations over the past two weeks. The Russians have agreed to release four prisoners convicted of spying for Western powers, stated in late afternoon the U.S. Department of Justice. In return, Americans should move to Russia ten people arrested by the FBI on June 28 last the United States and accused of collaborating with the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR). The eleventh, Christopher Metsos, took off after being freed on bail Cyprus.

A first exchange took place as early as yesterday. The scientist Igor Sutyagin, arrested in 1999 for spying for the British and Americans, called his father yesterday afternoon to confirm his arrival in Austria. From there he was due to fly to London, escorted by a British official, he will be released. Overnight, the alleged spy Anna Chapman, pretty redhead, 28, should be, in turn, escorted incognito from New York to Moscow.

The family of Igor Sutyagin which revealed ongoing negotiations. A spokesman for the U.S. State Department limited himself to recognize that the fate of the spies had been discussed between representatives of both countries. Just as the Russian authorities. The relatives and lawyer Igor Sutyagin indicated that the researcher had been transferred earlier this week from prison in the north to Moscow. The Russian authorities have offered him to sign a document which confirms his guilt, in exchange for which he was pardoned and deported. The event took place in the presence of American diplomats, according to the family, who met the researcher on Tuesday.

Igor Sutyagin, who has always denied being a spy, said his relatives that he had seen an initial list of ten other people who could be exchanged with him. He cited only a few names, including those of Sergei Skripal, a former Russian military intelligence colonel, and Aleksander Zaporojski, former agent of foreign intelligence service. According Sutyagin, the idea of this exchange came from the U.S. authorities. Since no American is being held for espionage in Russia, the prisoners made by Moscow should all be Russian citizens. No law in Russia and the United States does not provide for such an exchange, the decision has been taken in the highest spheres power.

a process fraught with pitfalls

The White House and the Kremlin to date show little talkative. Viktor Kremenyuk, deputy director of the Institute of USA and Canada Russian Academy of Sciences, believes that "both countries do not want to harm their rapprochement initiated by Barack Obama. Kremenyuk familiar Igor Sutyagin. Before being arrested for spying in 1999, Sutyagin was a researcher specializing in arms for his institute. "Many of the accusations against him are pure invention," said Kremenyuk.

In all likelihood, Sutyagin, as alleged spies arrested in the U.S., does not hold any sensitive information and therefore does not represent a threat to Russian national security. Kremenyuk believes that the rapid conclusion of the case "does not mean that Russian-US relations have a bright future ahead of them. The bilateral reconciliation "will always be fraught with difficulties. There are people on both sides, formed during the Cold War, who want to derail the process, "referring to American conservatives.