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Russia's spies must learn from betrayal: Medvedev

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev arrives at Haneda airport in Tokyo, for the APEC Summit in Yokohama, November 12, 2010. REUTERS/Toru Hanai

Russia's President Dmitry Medvedev arrives at Haneda airport in Tokyo, for the APEC Summit in Yokohama, November 12, 2010.

Credit: Reuters/Toru Hanai

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By Gleb Bryanski

SEOUL | Fri Nov 12, 2010 2:59pm EST

SEOUL (Reuters) - President Dmitry Medvedev told Russia's once mighty spy agency on Friday to put its house in order after a senior spymaster betrayed a network of agents to the United States.

The Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) is grappling with the network's betrayal by the head of Moscow's deep cover spying operations in the United States, one of Russia's most serious intelligence failures since the end of the Cold War.

"There should be an internal investigation and lessons should be drawn," Medvedev told reporters at a briefing after the Group of 20 summit in Seoul.

Asked about a report in the newspaper Kommersant which broke the story, Medvedev said: "For me the Kommersant publication is not news, I knew about it on the day it happened."

Kommersant identified the man as Colonel Shcherbakov and said he was responsible for unmasking a Russian spy ring in the United States in June. The arrest of its members humiliated Moscow just days after a summit in Washington between Medvedev and President Barack Obama.

The detained agents were exchanged in July for Russians suspected of spying for the West in a Cold War-style spy swap.

They returned to a heroes' welcome in Moscow, singing patriotic songs with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB spy, and receiving awards from Medvedev at a private Kremlin ceremony.

Putin said at the time they had been betrayed but the seniority of the U.S. mole and the fact that Shcherbakov was able to slip out of Russia have added to speculation that SVR chief Mikhail Fradkov could be sacked.

"The alleged spy was a senior Russian official and thus one with great access to highly sensitive information, such as the identities and operations of operatives in the United States," said Jay LeBeau, a former CIA official.

"He would have been in a position to do enormous damage to Russian intelligence interests.

"One can be sure that this fellow provided his U.S. handlers with other information as well."

The failure has weakened the spy agency's position in Moscow, prompting a debate about whether it should be merged with the Federal Security Service (FSB), the main successor of the Soviet-era KGB.

(Writing by Thomas Grove and Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Andrew Dobbie)
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Comments (1)
Pendragon wrote:
The revelation of a deep cover Russian spying operation in the United States has surprised and shocked some Westerners. The ancient practice of espionage, though, dating since the time of Thucydides and earlier, is still part of the secret apparatus of statecraft. According to Research Paper No. 143 of June 2010 published by the Research Institute for European and American Studies (RIEAS), since the 1920s, the former Soviet Union has been trying to obtain high-tech industrial technology from the United States and Western Europe via espionage. The goal of the USSR was not to acquire Western technology only for military reasons, but also to support their waning domestic economy. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union did NOT finalize espionage operations committed by Russia. From 1992 onwards, the successors of the KGB (the SVR or ‘Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki Rossii’/Russian Foreign Intelligence Service)shifted towards the collection and analysis of economic intelligence instead of military intelligence. The difficult economic situation of Russia increased its need of high-tech intelligence. Oleg Kalugin, a former high-ranking KGB officer, when asked in an interview in 2003 if Russia still commits espionage against the USA, answered, “Sure, now more than ever. Russia wants to become a world power economically. The focus is on economic and technical espionage.” For Russia, there are three important areas for the conduct and application of economic espionage – these being, first, continued success in the international market for weapons systems (these being a major Russian export earner); second, the collection and analysis of satellite technology; and third, concentrations of oil/natural gas deposits and associated energy routes. President Medvedev may hint darkly at high level punitive investigations of the betrayal of his country’s most deeply-placed Western agents, but the practice of spying will undoubtedly continue.

Nov 13, 2010 8:03am EST  --  Report as abuse
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