http://www.smh.com.au/world/russians-curse-agent-turned-traitor-20101119-1810o.html
Russians curse agent turned traitor November 20, 2010 Anna Chapman ... one of 10 spies arrested in the US. Photo: AP MOSCOW: The Russian double agent who exposed a Kremlin spy ring operating in the US this year has been unmasked as a former KGB special forces soldier who fought in Afghanistan. Russian intelligence sources told local media that the traitor who gave away Anna Chapman and nine others was Colonel Alexander Poteyev, who served in the KGB's elite Zenith special forces unit during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. A criminal case for ''state treason'' had been opened against him and he would be tried in absentia, they said. The capture of the spy ring caused huge embarrassment in Russia and triggered the biggest spy swap since the Cold War. Afterwards the President, Dmitry Medvedev, ordered an internal investigation at the SVR foreign intelligence service, the agency that ran the compromised agents. Fyodor Yakovlev, a KGB veteran who said he served with Colonel Poteyev in Afghanistan, told the Regnum news agency that he now regarded his former comrade as a ''non-person''. ''This non-person will live a lonely life until the end of his days in fear,'' he said. ''Lonely because his relatives and loved ones will not be by his side. His children will have to alter their appearances or be doomed to the same nightmarish existence as their father.'' Colonel Poteyev is believed to have fled to the US in June through his native Belarus, just days before the 10 agents were arrested in America. He was reportedly a deputy director of the SVR's Department S, which co-ordinates the work of illegal agents in the US. He is believed to have worked in New York in the early 1990s. It was there that the CIA is said to have recruited him, offering him a financial settlement. His wife later became resident in America and his son and daughter moved there before he fled Russia in June. Initial reports described a man with the same biography but gave him a different name, Colonel Scherbakov, but intelligence sources said that this man had fled Russia for the US years earlier. Telegraph, London [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] ------------------------------------ Post message: [email protected] Subscribe : [email protected] Unsubscribe : [email protected] List owner : [email protected] Homepage : http://proletar.8m.com/Yahoo! Groups Links <*> To visit your group on the web, go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/ <*> Your email settings: Individual Email | Traditional <*> To change settings online go to: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/proletar/join (Yahoo! ID required) <*> To change settings via email: [email protected] [email protected] <*> To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [email protected] <*> Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to: http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
