Betrayal refreshed again

В stories With the scandalous exposure of the network of Russian illegal immigrants working in the United States, a new person appeared. An unnamed source in the Russian special services yesterday, through Russian news agencies, made public the name of another high-ranking foreign intelligence officer (SVR) who escaped to the United States: he said that Colonel Poteev had passed the illegal immigrants. This means that the loudest failure of the SVR of recent years could be the result of not a single treachery in Russian intelligence. As the interlocutors of “Kommersant”, who were familiar with the details of treason, stated that “the surname as such does not matter - the main thing is the fact of betrayal”

Yesterday, new details became known in the sensational case of the exposure of ten Russian intelligence officers expelled from the United States in June of this year. An anonymous source in the security forces of the Russian Federation told several news agencies at once that the real culprit for the failure of the group of illegal immigrants was not Colonel SVR Shcherbakov, who had previously been told to Kommersant (see the number from November 11), but former deputy head of the US Department of Control C SVR Colonel Poteev.

His name and patronymic interlocutor agencies did not specify. Meanwhile, the details he recounted from the family life of Colonel Poteev, as well as the circumstances of his flight from Russia, almost completely coincided with the version stated by Kommersant. In particular, it was confirmed that he fled to the United States a few days before the start of the June visit to Washington by Russian President Dmitry Medvedev, and a few days before Poteev himself fled under various pretexts, his daughter went first, and then his son. At the same time, the colonel's wife lived in the United States all this time. “These circumstances that accompanied the traitor’s flight, of course, aggravate the gross blunder of our special services,” an anonymous source concluded.

At the same time, interlocutors of the Interfax agency in the law enforcement agencies of Russia yesterday confirmed the fact of the presence of a SVR and a traitor named Shcherbakov: “Shcherbakov" left "a few years ago. But he did not work in the administration of" C ", but responsible for counterintelligence intelligence support. "

In the SVR, the information that appeared in the media yesterday, as before, was flatly refused to discuss. “We do not comment on this,” a spokesman for the department told Kommersant.

Former KGB general Oleg Kalugin, now living in the United States and having 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 name is completely unfamiliar. Never heard of it and the man I have not met with such a last name. If I knew Shcherbakov, then there is no Poteev. This is a complete mystery for me. Shcherbakov once worked as one of my employees for a long time, then moved to this special department (C department for dealing with illegal immigrants. "), there grew to head of the department. But now some contradictory messages appear that he has long gone and that it is not about him at all. All this is strange. "

However, last Friday, commenting on the investigation of the circumstances of exposing Russian illegal immigrants in the United States to Kommersant, President Dmitry Medvedev said he had known everything from day one: “As for me, what Kommersant published was not news. I knew about it that day when it happened, with all the attributes and accessories, but there must be a corresponding investigation. Relevant lessons from this should be learned. "

One way or another, the additional details of the espionage scandal that were discovered yesterday and the appearance of another traitor in the ranks of the SVR indicate that the June espionage scandal could be the result of a complex failure in the work of this special service. Last summer, a senior FSB officer at one of the closed meetings in Moscow laid responsibility for the failure of the Russian intelligence network on Colonel Shcherbakov, who, as it turned out now, ran off about two years ago. Both Shcherbakov and Poteev occupied rather high posts, which means both could pass information about illegal Russian intelligence agents to the Americans. “I fully admit that it could have been Poteev. However, the name as such does not matter in this context. The main thing is the fact of betrayal,” Gennady Gudkov, deputy chairman of the State Duma’s security committee, told Kommersant yesterday.

It is not excluded that, following the results of the ongoing investigation of the failure of the SVR, the Russian leadership can take both personnel and structural decisions on service reform. Sources of "Kommersant" in the Russian state structures previously allowed the possibility of its return to the jurisdiction of the FSB. Military experts are convinced that change is necessary. "What happened suggests that the number of traitors (in SVR.-" Kommersant ") exceeds a reasonable limit, especially in comparison with what statistics on this account in the leading special services of the world. We seem to be in the first position, which means Igor Korochenko, editor-in-chief of the National Defense magazine, member of the public council at the Russian Defense Ministry, is sure to tighten the security regime. “The commission that is investigating the failure should provide recommendations to the country's leadership. After the Aldrich Ames case, the CIA changed I aimed at tightening control. We should have made similar conclusions. "