Russia spy guilty of betraying country
Source: Agencies |
June 28, 2011, Tuesday
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Print Edition
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A RUSSIAN spymaster was convicted of treason in absentia yesterday for betraying 10 US-based agents.
"Mary, try to take this calmly: I am leaving not for a short time but forever," Colonel Alexander Poteyev wrote in a text message sent to his wife as he fled Russia, and read out to the Moscow military court. "I did not want this but I had to. I am starting a new life. I shall try to help the children."
The unmasking of the Russian spy ring last June came just days after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's Washington summit with US President Barack Obama.
A judge at the court, meeting in closed session, said Poteyev, a colonel in Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, had inflicted "significant damage to Russian security," Interfax news agency reported.
The judge said that Poteyev had passed details about how Moscow finances and communicates with its spies working abroad to the US Central Intelligence Agency.
Poteyev, deputy head of the SVR's "S" department that oversees "deep cover" spying operations, was sentenced to a 25-year prison term. Court materials were classified as "secret."
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB spy, said last year that traitors come to a bad end and a Russian newspaper quoted Kremlin source as saying a hitman had been sent after the man who betrayed Russia's spying operation.
The unmasking of the spy ring made Poteyev one of Russia's most senior turncoats in decades.
All 10 Russian agents arrested in the United States pleaded guilty and were deported to Russia.
"Mary, try to take this calmly: I am leaving not for a short time but forever," Colonel Alexander Poteyev wrote in a text message sent to his wife as he fled Russia, and read out to the Moscow military court. "I did not want this but I had to. I am starting a new life. I shall try to help the children."
The unmasking of the Russian spy ring last June came just days after Russian President Dmitry Medvedev's Washington summit with US President Barack Obama.
A judge at the court, meeting in closed session, said Poteyev, a colonel in Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service, had inflicted "significant damage to Russian security," Interfax news agency reported.
The judge said that Poteyev had passed details about how Moscow finances and communicates with its spies working abroad to the US Central Intelligence Agency.
Poteyev, deputy head of the SVR's "S" department that oversees "deep cover" spying operations, was sentenced to a 25-year prison term. Court materials were classified as "secret."
Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB spy, said last year that traitors come to a bad end and a Russian newspaper quoted Kremlin source as saying a hitman had been sent after the man who betrayed Russia's spying operation.
The unmasking of the spy ring made Poteyev one of Russia's most senior turncoats in decades.
All 10 Russian agents arrested in the United States pleaded guilty and were deported to Russia.
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