Posted on July 25, 2010 - by Venik

Vladimir Putin consoles exposed Russian spies with ‘singalong’

Russian prime minister praises agents recently expelled from US and hints at a grim future for ‘traitors’ who betrayed them

Vladimir Putin has revealed he got together for a spies’ singalong with the group of Russian sleeper agents expelled from the US this month.

“I met them,” said the Russian prime minister. “We talked about life. We sang, not karaoke, but to live music. We sang From What the Motherland Begins” – a sentimental Soviet song from the 1968 film Sword and Shield, about a daring Russian agent who is sent to Germany during the second world war and infiltrates the SS.

He added: “I’m not joking, I am serious. And other songs with a similar content.”

Putin made the extraordinary admission while talking to reporters on a trip to Ukraine yesterday. He did not say when or where he met the agents but confirmed they included Anna Chapman, the 28-year-old businesswoman formerly married to a Briton.

Putin, himself a former KGB colonel who headed its successor agency, the FSB, for a year in the late 1990s, praised the agents for their professionalism.

“Just imagine,” he said. “First you have to master a language as if it were your own, think in that language, talk in it, [then] fulfil the task set in the interests of your motherland over many years, suffering daily dangers for you and your loved ones, who don’t even know who you are or for whom you work.”

Putin also said he knew the names of those who betrayed the agents. “It was the result of treason,” he said, predicting a grim future for those responsible. “It always ends badly for traitors: as a rule, their end comes from drink or drugs, lying in a ditch. And for what?”

The candour of Putin’s remarks contrasted sharply with statements made by Russian diplomats and the SVR, the foreign intelligence service, which has tried to play down the agents’ significance.

When the US authorities announced they had uncovered an espionage ring involving 11 Russian “illegals” – sleeper agents without diplomatic cover – at the end of June, the Russian foreign ministry claimed the accusations were “baseless” and “unseemly”. It said the arrested individuals were Russian citizens but had “not conducted any activities directed against the interests of the United States”.

Ten of the agents later returned to Moscow in a US-Russia “spy swap” for four men accused of passing information to MI6 and the CIA, who were pardoned by the Kremlin and allowed to travel to the west.

SVR officers are thought to have been interviewing the illegals, who were active for up to nine years in the US, at a secret facility near Moscow in an attempt to flush out a double agent, possibly among their handlers.

Putin said the group would find good jobs. “I’m sure they will work in worthy places and they will have bright and interesting lives,” he said.

Earlier in the day, Putin had joined a bikers’ rally in Sevastopol, a Russian-dominated city in southern Ukraine. Wearing fingerless leather mittens and dark glasses, he drove a three-wheeled Harley-Davidson up to a stage. The motorbike is “the most democratic form of transport” he told the crowd.

Original article

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