Moscow Relieved That Spy Scandal Is Over

A sense of relief seemed to pervade the halls of government over the weekend that a potentially embarrassing spy scandal with the United States was over and the two sides could get back to work on bolstering ties.

But few Russian officials showed any enthusiasm about discussing the two-week affair.

In a brief, three-sentence statement, the Foreign Ministry said the exchange of 10 Russian sleeper agents from the United States for four convicted spies from Russia "was carried out in the general context of improving Russian-U.S. relations."

The most hawkish commentators and policymakers largely backed away from their usual saber rattling. Nationalist politician Vladimir Zhirinovsky warned of a renewed Cold War but softened his remarks to explain that this would happen "not tomorrow, but maybe in five or 10 years."

Dmitry Rogozin, Moscow's NATO representative and one of the country's most hawkish commentators, was unusually silent about the issue on his prolific Twitter account. He did not return a request for comment Friday.

Sergei Markov, a senior State Duma deputy for United Russia, the party headed by Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, toed the official line by linking Russia's approach to improved relations with the United States. "The atmosphere has changed profoundly," he told The Moscow Times, adding that ties had moved far from Soviet-era hostility and stood closer to U.S.-French relations.

Markov, however, acknowledged that there was a good deal of embarrassment on Moscow's side. "There certainly is a feeling of shame because these so-called spies look so childish," he said.

U.S. Justice Department documents have depicted some of the uncovered agents as ineffective and lazy. The fact that none of them were charged with espionage has been taken as a clear indication that their mission, which in some cases lasted for more than a decade, was a failure.

Markov also insisted that Russia had been vindicated in the case of Igor Sutyagin, one of the traded prisoners whose incarceration in Russia had been characterized by human rights campaigners as a miscarriage of justice.

"The fact that the U.S. requested this man to be handed over proves that he had worked as an agent for them," Markov said.

Sutyagin, an arms analyst, was sentenced in 2004 to 15 years in prison on charges of passing classified information to a British company alleged to be a front for the CIA. He maintained his innocence and reportedly only signed a confession last week out of fear of spoiling the other three prisoners' chances of freedom.

The U.S. State Department denied Thursday that Sutyagin was a spy.

The quick resolution to the spy scandal speaks volumes about U.S. President Barack Obama's determination to keep relations in track, analysts said.

Obama was briefed about the FBI's case against the Russian suspects on June 11 — exactly 15 days before he met with Medvedev in the White House for the "cheeseburger summit" and 18 days before their arrests, U.S. media reported, citing unidentified U.S. officials. The arrests were prompted by plans by several suspects to return to Russia over the summer, and Obama personally raised the idea of a prisoner exchange well before the FBI acted, the officials said.

The CIA contacted the Foreign Intelligence Service, or SVR, around June 28, the day after the arrests, to float the idea of an exchange, setting the stage for three phone calls between CIA Director Leon Panetta and SVR chief Mikhail Fradkov, the officials said. The two sides agreed to a swap just days later, on the July 3-4 weekend.

Russia's main interest was that the 10 suspects be returned to Russia without convictions, said Tatyana Stanovaya, an analyst with the Center of Political Technologies, a think tank.

"The most important thing is to return them quickly, so that they spend as little time as possible in the U.S.," she said.

But before the swap could take place, a flurry of negotiations were held on the details. The CIA identified the four prisoners that the United States wanted freed and asked Russia not to take retaliatory steps against American citizens, U.S. officials said. The SVR, in turn, required signed confessions from the four prisoners to make way for Medvedev to pardon them.

Medvedev and Obama have not discussed the spy affair, and they plan to keep it that way, The Associated Press reported, citing White House officials.

Ordinary Russians, meanwhile, worried last week that the spy affair would damage relations, according to a new poll by the independent Levada Center.

The poll found that 53 percent of Russians thought that U.S. intelligence agencies fabricated the spy case as a “provocation” to undermine relations, while only 10 percent said the FBI had uncovered real spies. A total of 37 percent had no opinion, according to the July 2-5 poll, which had a margin of error of 3.4 percentage points.

"There is an understanding that this is less an attack against Russia and more of one against Obama," said Markov, the Duma deputy.

Vice President Joe Biden, who kicked off Obama's "reset" in relations with a speech in 2008, defended the swap of the 10 suspects for four prisoners as a good deal.

"We got back four really good ones," Biden said on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno" comedy show on Friday. "And the 10, they've been here a long time, but they hadn't done much."

Biden offered a quick comeback when Leno showed him a photo of Anna Chapman, the redhead spy suspect who became an Internet sensation. "Let me make it clear, it wasn't my idea to send her back," he said.