Russia and the US face their most serious diplomatic crisis of the Obama era after the Kremlin angrily denounced the arrest of 10 US-based Russian spies and said the FBI operation to apprehend them was an unsavoury cold war plot.
The alleged spies were in US custody on Tuesday, after being charged in court on Monday with conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government. Police in Cyprus have also arrested the ring’s alleged paymaster and 11th spy, Christopher Metsos, at Lanarca airport. Metsos was attempting to catch a morning flight to Budapest in Hungary, they said.
A district court in Lanarca later released Metsos on bail for €20 000, prompting fears he would flee to the Turkish-run north of the island, or take a boat to nearby Turkey or Syria. Greek police said they were dumbfounded by the court’s decision. “It’s not what we expected,” said police spokesperson Michalis Michael, adding that they were seeking more documents from the US and would go back to court.
Russia’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, today questioned the timing of the arrests in the US, which came just three days after Barack Obama hosted Russia’s President Dmitry Medvedev on a successful US visit, which included talks in Washington, a joint presidential cheeseburger and a tour of Silicon Valley.
Unseemly arrests
“The moment when all this was done was chosen quite smartly,” Lavrov said. In a statement, Russia’s foreign ministry described the arrests as “groundless” and “unseemly”, and suggested they were a shadowy attempt to undermine the recent “reset” in US-Russian relations “announced by the US administration”. It said the suspects were Russian citizens who had never acted against US interests.
President Obama declined to comment on the case when asked about the alleged spies during a briefing with reporters on the economy.
The diplomatic scandal spread to Britain after it emerged that one of the 11 alleged spies involved in the “long-term deep cover” espionage ring had used a fake British passport. According to US court documents, Tracey Lee Ann Foley travelled on a fraudulent British passport prepared by the SVR, Russia’s foreign intelligence agency.
Foley was given the passport in Vienna en route to Moscow, the FBI indictment said. Another Russian spy, Richard Murphy, picked up a fake Irish passport at a “brush past” meeting with a Russian agent in Rome. He then used it to travel to Moscow.
A Foreign Office spokesperson said: “We are aware that the indictments state that one of the accused has travelled on a UK passport. We will be investigating this fully with the US. We are establishing the facts so it would be wrong to comment further at this stage. We remain confident that the British passport is one of the most secure documents of its kind — fully meeting rigorous international standards.”
There was no indication whether the passport used the identity of a genuine UK national, as happened in a case earlier this year that severely tested relations between Britain and Israel.
The spy scandal places Medvedev in one of the most uncomfortable dilemmas of his two-year presidency. He now has to weigh up the Kremlin’s response — and whether to expel or even arrest Americans living in Russia. Relations between Washington and Moscow have improved significantly since the semi-cold war days of the Bush era, with both Obama and Medvedev investing heavily in their personal friendship — and there have been results: a new, if modest, Start treaty on nuclear arms reduction; a deal on civilian nuclear cooperation; the US has backed Russia’s long-delayed WTO application and Russia has taken a tougher line on Iran. The Russian foreign ministry said today: “We are counting on the American side to display the appropriate understanding in this matter, including taking into account the positive character of the current stage of Russian-American relations.”
Amateurish behaviour
A 55-page US dossier reveals in humiliating detail the frequently amateurish and bungling behaviour of Moscow’s agents — who lived in leafy suburban homes in Boston, New York and Washington DC.
The FBI said the spies were urged to adopt Americanised names to blend in, and ferret out information from thinktanks and government officials.
Far from staying hidden, however, the FBI appears to have known about the espionage ring since at least 2000, and tracked its every move.
FBI agents secretly observed numerous encounters conducted in Manhattan coffee bars, in which the spies would send data to their Russian handlers via wireless transmissions from their laptops. Often, however the technology broke down. This prompted desperate pleas for Moscow to sort the problem out. The US court documents also lays bare the stiltedly textbook spycraft used by the Russians to identify their own side. In one comic encounter spy Anna Chapman is told her contact will ask: “Excuse me, but haven’t we met in California last summer?” Her reply is: “No, I think it was the Hamptons.” Another alleged spy, Mikhail Semenko, posted personal photos on the Russian social networking website Odnoklassniki. One shows him posing in front of the White House; another in his swimming trunks on Miami beach; a third with a blonde against the Manhattan skyline.
“They [the Russians] are going to have to make a calculation,” Sam Greene, deputy head of Moscow’s Carnegie Centre said today. It would be unthinkable for Moscow not to respond, Greene said, adding that it was unclear what form this might take. None of the alleged spies were diplomats or consular officials making a classic tit-for-tat expulsion unlikely. Russia might claim to have uncovered a spy ring of its own possibly made up of Russian citizens working for US companies. Or it could target Americans.Either way, the FBI arrests appear to be further evidence of the explosion in Russian intelligence activity abroad over the past 10 years. Since 2000, when Vladimir Putin became president, western governments have reported a dramatic increase in spying activity by Moscow in Europe, the US, Africa, and Latin America. Putin, a former KGB agent in east Germany, tripled the budget for the FSB, the KGB’s domestic successor, which he headed until 1999. Former intelligence officers now make up a huge proportion of Russia’s ruling elite.
Sabotaging improved US-Russian ties
Hardliners on both sides are likely welcome the spy scandal as an opportunity to sabotage improving US-Russian ties. Despite the recent thawing in relations, both the US and Russia had continued to spy on each other, Mark Urnov, dean at the political science department at Russia’s higher school of economics said. “This [spy scandal] is an issue dating from previous years. The security services can’t stop their activities immediately. Until recently there was a semi-Cold War between US and Russia. So why not spy?”
According to Urnov Moscow was unlikely to drop its current positive attitude to Washington.
“Of course there are some groups inside the (Russian) political elite who would prefer to continue with more or less cold relations. But the dominant tendency now is to be friendly. I don’t see any forces on both sides who could be interested in intensifying this scandal, or in stirring up aggravation now between these countries.” — Guardian News and Media 2010