In the story of the scandalous exposure of the network of Russian illegal immigrants working in the United States, a new person has appeared. An unnamed source in the Russian special services yesterday, through Russian news agencies, made public the name of another high-ranking Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) official who fled to the United States: Colonel Poteev turned in the illegal immigrants, he said. This means that the loudest failure of the SVR in recent years could have been the result of more than a single betrayal in Russian intelligence. As Kommersant's interlocutors familiar with the details of the betrayal said, "the surname as such does not matter - the main thing is the very fact of betrayal."
Yesterday, new details became known in the sensational case of exposing ten Russian intelligence officers expelled from the United States in June this year. An anonymous source in the power structures of the Russian Federation told several news agencies at once that the real culprit for the failure of the group of illegal immigrants is not SVR Colonel Shcherbakov, who was previously reported by Kommersant (see the issue of November 11), but the former deputy head of the American SVR C department, Colonel Poteev.
The interlocutor of the agencies did not specify his name and patronymic. Meanwhile, the details he told about the family life of Colonel Poteev, as well as the circumstances of his flight from Russia, almost completely coincided with the version presented by Kommersant. In particular, it was confirmed that he fled to the United States a few days before the start of the June visit of Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to Washington, and a few days before Poteyev himself fled, first his daughter, and then his son, went there under various pretexts. At the same time, the colonel's wife lived in the United States all this time. "These circumstances, accompanying the traitor's flight, undoubtedly aggravate the gross miscalculation of our special services," the anonymous source concluded.
At the same time, the interlocutors of the Interfax agency in the Russian law enforcement agencies yesterday confirmed the fact that there was a traitor by the name of Shcherbakov in the SVR: “Shcherbakov left” several years ago. responsible for counterintelligence support of intelligence.
The SVR flatly refused to discuss the information that appeared in the media yesterday, as before. "We are not commenting on this," an employee of the department's press service told Kommersant.
Former KGB general Oleg Kalugin, who now lives in the United States and previously identified Colonel Shcherbakov as an intelligence officer known to him, told Kommersant that he never knew a man by the name of Poteev: “For me, this surname is absolutely unfamiliar. I have never heard it. I have never met Shcherbakov with that name. If I knew Shcherbakov, then Poteev is not. This is a complete mystery to me. Shcherbakov once worked as one of my employees for a long time, then moved to this special department (department "C" for working with illegal immigrants. - "Kommersant "), there he grew up to the head of a department. But now there are some conflicting reports that he has long gone and that it is not about him at all. All this is strange."
However, even last Friday, commenting on the investigation carried out by Kommersant into the circumstances surrounding the exposure of Russian illegal immigrants to the United States, President Dmitry Medvedev said that he knew about everything from day one: “As for me, what Kommersant published is nothing new. I knew about it the day it happened, with all the attributes and accessories, but the appropriate proceedings must go through. Relevant lessons should be learned from this."
One way or another, but the additional details of the spy scandal that were revealed yesterday and the appearance of another traitor in the ranks of the SVR indicate that the June spy scandal could have been the result of a complex failure in the work of this special service. Back in the summer, at one of the closed meetings in Moscow, a high-ranking FSB officer blamed Colonel Shcherbakov for the failure of the Russian intelligence network, who, as it turned out, had fled about two years ago. Both Shcherbakov and Poteev held fairly high positions, which means that both could transfer information about Russian illegal spies to the Americans. "I fully admit that it could have been Poteev. However, the surname as such in this context does not matter. The main thing is the fact of betrayal," Gennady Gudkov, deputy chairman of the State Duma's security committee, told Kommersant yesterday.
It is possible that following the ongoing investigation into the failure of the SVR, the Russian leadership may make both personnel and structural decisions on reforming the service. Kommersant's sources in Russian state structures previously admitted the possibility of her returning to the authority of the FSB. Military experts are also convinced that changes are necessary. “What happened suggests that the number of traitors (in the SVR - Kommersant) exceeds a reasonable limit, especially in comparison with the statistics in the leading intelligence services of the world. We seem to be in the first position, which means we should to tighten the security regime, - said the editor-in-chief of the National Defense magazine, a member of the public council under the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation Igor Korotchenko. - The commission investigating the failure should submit recommendations to the country's leadership. control. We must draw similar conclusions."
