In uniform

The case of Sityagin

July 23, 2010 Julia Latynina

Almost two weeks have passed since the exchange of four Russian citizens for ten Russian spies. Of the four exchanged three - Zaporizhzhya, Skripal and Vasilenko - special services. The fourth is Igor Sutyan, a military analyst from the Institute of the United States and Canada, sentenced to 15 years for espionage and always denied his guilt. Amnesty International recognized Sutyagin as political prisoner.

Bearing near London?

And now two weeks passed, and Igor Sutyan made himself felt for the first time-he didn’t say, neither where he, nor anything, but said only “I am recovering, gaining strength”, “I am going to finally return to Obninsk and fix the shattered porch of our house”.

What does the political prisoner do when he is released? Gives a press conference. What does the spy do? It gets to Debrifing. “The British intelligence agencies conduct the Debriff of two Russians freed during the exchange of spies,” Guardian writes, adding that Sutyatin and Skripal are in one place.

Igor Sutyagin was released under dubious circumstances: the US government on its own initiative included it in the list, the other three defendants are spies. If he was included in the list as a prisoner of conscience, then, probably, Washington could definitely make it clear that he did not consider Sutyagin a spy. Instead, Washington officially denies the espionage of all four, and unofficially, US Vice President Joe Biden jokes: “We exchanged four excellent for ten Navazhnetsky.” A cruel joke for the political prisoner.

Sutyagin’s protection, understanding what effect Sutyagin will participate in exchange, tried to ensure the maximum PR control over the situation. Even before the start of the exchange, his lawyer Anna Stavitskaya stated that Sutyagina would be exchanged for ten Russian spies along with other people, whose names Sutyan did not remember, because he was in a state of stress.

As a result, foreign media wrote about the exchange of spies: “Dix Clowns Contre Quatre Authentiques Agents (“ Ten Clowns on four Real Agents ”,“ Figaro ”), Four Spies Expelled by Russia Said to have arrived in Britain ”(“ Four spies expelled from Russia reported, arrived in Britain ”,“ Gardian ”), and Russian news sounded like this:“ The Russian scientist Igor Sutyan voluntarily agreed to extradition to the UK. ” In addition, the Western media called Sutyagin not “scientists”, as in Russia, but a “military analyst”.

Further, the situation became very doubtful. The natives and defenders of Sityagin, upon arrival in the UK, began to fill up with the media with information: “Scientist Sutyan, having arrived in England, does not get in touch”, “Sutyatin’s scientist was handed over to the names of friends who he can live”, “the scientist Sutyan comes to his senses in a small town near London, the names of which he does not want to report,“ “the scientist Sutyatin is“ in the same The hotel, which is a week ago. "

And now - the letter of Sutyagin . Good would still be about a person who abandoned all contacts with presses indifferent to PR. But here we see exactly something else: there is PR, but there is no person. Debriffs usually take two weeks, there is no question that Sutyan will sooner or later come to the “friends-scientists”. But who kept him for two weeks in a “small hotel”? Is it still a "bloody gabnya"?

This is also interesting: the opinions of Western professionals. “They risked their lives to cooperate with us,” says Peter Ernst, the director of the International Spying Museum, and in the past, the head of the CIA group, which arranged Arkady Shevchenko in an interview, “and we have obligations to them. I don’t think that after three days upon arrival they will begin to equip themselves on ads in the newspapers. ”

“We have obligations in relation to them,” says David Weiss in an interview with The New York Times, and receives the answer: “You do not leave your people on the battlefield.” David Weiss is the author of an “invisible government”, a book that the CIA wanted to buy and burn.

And, in a striking way, none of the Western journalists immediately reproach David Weiss and Peter Ernst that they were sold by a bloody gabne. The question of Sutyan unexpectedly turned out to be an intra -Russian question - there is no discussion in the West.

The essence of the matter

What do we know about the case of Sityagin? About the main thing - nothing.

We know that the military analyst Igor Sutyan, the head of the military-technical cooperation sector of the Institute of the United States and Canada, taught at continuing education courses for crews of nuclear submarines and, on its own initiative, visited a number of secret objects. He had no admission to Gostine, but he had contacts among secretaries.

The Institute of the United States and Canada is an orthodox establishment, in which, unlike IMEMO, even signs of free thought have never been noticed. His military direction is headed by General GRU. Sutyan one of his reports wrote for the FSB, and quickly made a career of military analyst Sutyagin in any way with a distracted Paganel.

In May 1998, at a conference in the UK, Igor Sutyan met a certain Shonu Kidd from Alternative Futures. Sean Kidd introduced himself as an employee of a consulting company, but for some reason he was interested in submarines. Igor Sutyan began to cooperate with the company, his reward was at first 700, and then 1000 pounds per month. There was no contract, the money was transferred in cash, during the search, Sutyagin found $ 25 thousand.

When the scandal began, the company disappeared, and its two founders, with whom Igor Sutyan - Sean Kidd and Nadi Locke spoke, - as it turned out, did not exist in nature. Two of our best journalists who write about the special services, Andrei Soldatov and Irina Borogan, went to London and, having checked all the possible directories along with English journalists, did not find any traces of Sean Kidd and Nadi Locke.

But Borogan and soldiers found the third founder of the company named Christopher Martin, in the house of which Sutyan met with Shonu Kidd. Christopher Martin, who at that time worked in a small publishing house, specializing in the publication of scout memoirs, said that he hears about Sutyan and Kidda, and a month later the house was hastily sold.

“Our hygiene rules are very simple - not to get into the nuclear and not communicate with the foul -falling offices,” the famous military analyst Konstantin Makienko, an expert at the Center for Analysis of Strategies and Technologies, told me. “The market of people involved in Russia is very narrow. All the famous players will vime there. Nadia Locke and Sean Kidd are not known to anyone, ”said Alexei Makarkin, vice president of the Center for Political Technology.

Did Igor Sutyan understand for whom he works?

Yes. The FSB spread the recording of one of his first interrogations. A fragment of video recording is printed in the Rossiyskaya Gazeta. In it, Sutyan first tells about his acquaintance with Kidd: “I proposed the Internet as a way of transmitting my materials. To which Sean Kidd said that he was interested in exclusive information and would not want someone else to use it. ”

The consultations that Alternative Futures demanded from him strongly alerted Sutyagin.

“Nadia Locke promised to ask questions about the successes of our submariners in the discovery of foreign ships ... But then it went about non -acoustic methods of detecting goals. This alerted me, because in order to ask such questions, my interlocutor must have special preparation ... Nadia caused me a strong suspicion of what was an employee of some special services. Despite the economic factor who has a pre -priest, I felt uncomfortable, my soul did not lay for such cooperation. I decided to refuse these meetings and connections ... but - I did not refuse. Too great was the temptation to earn. ”

“During one of the meetings,” Sutyan continues, “Nadia asked me about some very specific things associated with weapons on the new generation’s Russian nuclear submarines. It was unpleasant for me ... Another question is - what is the difference between new submarines and previous modifications. ”

The practice of work through fictitious companies is the usual practice of special services. A very similar story happened - more precisely, did not happen - with the famous military observer Pavel Felgenhauer. In the mid-90s, a representative of a certain Trufax news agency, who promised to post his articles abroad, approached Felgenhauer, and ordered an article for 700 pounds. Pavel wrote an article. After some time, the agency asked the second article. "Where is the first printed?" - asked the ambitious Felgenhauer, and the agency disappeared from the radar.

Pavel Felgenhauer did not even attach any importance to the episode until the scandalous agent of the Mi-6 Richard Tomlinson published memories, from which it followed that Trufax was created specifically for the recruitment of the Felgenhauer, and the amount was transferred to Felgenhauer for the first article through Mikhail Bukhov, a former KGB agent, a year before Mi-6, amounted to 8 thousand pounds!

Question: Why should the British intelligence recruit journalist Felgenhauer, who has no secret admission? Answer: Felgenhauer talked very closely with the Minister of Defense Grachev. Access to secret carriers is no less important than access to secrets.

What did Sutyan do? We don't know. We know that this person talked with officers of the submarines at the retraining courses and went to secret objects and that Nadia Locke asked him "about some very specific things related to the weapons of new generation submarines."

But we do not know if he answered these questions. All his meetings with Nadia Locke and Shono Kidd took place abroad: in Belgium, Hungary, Great Britain. This is a standard intelligence practice. Maybe Sutyan said nothing that was of interest. Maybe he said. We do not know, and all doubts in this case should be interpreted in favor of the accused. Especially if you take into account that the process of Sityagin took place with gross violations, and among the jury were FSB agents.

But the Sutyagin case smells extremely poorly. Sutyan is not a hero Oleg Penkovsky, who worked against the Evil Empire and knew that he would be burned in the stove. This is not Innocent Volodin from the "First Circle", who is calling the US Embassy and warns that Soviet intelligence was preparing an abduction of the drawings of an atomic bomb. This is not Captain Marco Ramius from Tom Klensy's book “Hunt for Red October”. Igor Sutyan is just an ordinary employee of an official institute who decided to earn extra money, and whatever Yeltsin Russia was - it was not an empire of evil.

Usually people, caught in the "gray zone", like Sutyan, collaborate with the investigation and receive a minimum. So, for example, the German employee of Eurocopter, Werner Grappe, who sold Russian intelligence, unexpected documents on civilian helicopters did. He pleaded guilty and received 11 months conditionally. Sutyan categorically rested and received 15 years for it. For what? For arrogance? Muchno.

For what 15 years?

Actually, the last circumstance is almost the key in the Sutyagin case. Let's assume that the most worst is true. That Igor Sutyan is straight by Richard Sorge. That, visiting secret objects, he saw them through the built-in X-ray eye, and the drunken officers of the submarine behind a bottle of friendly vodka pulled him out technical data, which they did not remember in a sober form.

That the FSB did not prove all this, so as not to substitute the talkative sons of high -ranking parents or simply for unprofessionalism.

And what? And what damage to Russia did Sutyan? Do we have a war with the United States? With Great Britain? We still cannot fly up! Who caused more damage to Russia - Sutyan or those people in the Kremlin who decided that the “mace” will fly without bench tests?

They will tell me: this is the law, but in the USA this law is applied with commendable selectivity. In the United States, for example, the court had just sentenced the seventy-year-old Lynn Stewart, a lawyer, to ten years in prison for being an ardent human rights activist, she handed over from her client, blind sheikh, Omar Abdel Rachman, one of the most radical terrorist groups-al-Gamaa-al-Iislamy. But 10 Russian spies were not even charged. Because in the first case, it was about cooperation with a really dangerous enemy, and in the second - about clowning.

In the case of Sutyagin, there are extremely many lies and distortions from the FSB. Suffice it is enough that Sutyagin was originally detained in the fact of the disclosure of GOSTaina contained in the book “Strategic Nuclear Weapons of Russia” published by him, then they presented him with espionage on the American Joshua Hendler and only then, when the houses of Sutyagin conducted a search and found 25 thousand dollars there, apparently answering the question of their origin, said about the company. Alternative Futures. The FSB could not decide on the question for a long time who Sutyan spied on.

But, unfortunately, there are also enough fragments on the part of the defense. Sityagin was not convicted at all for working with open sources, as the defense constantly repeats. He was convicted of work on Alternative Futures, and these lawyers were already justified that all materials were open. Considering that all the meetings of Sityagin passed abroad, neither to prove, nor to refute this, and espionage is not a question of content, but forms. He spoke in the television program at least a superhostane - this is not espionage, at best, the disclosure of GOSTaina. He handed over to Moscow a encryption, which begins with the words “according to the New York Times” newspaper-this, sorry, espionage.

And the statements of the defense that Alternative Futures is a real company and that Sutyan could not give out GOSTINA, since he had no admission to her, they are not at all good at all. Richard Sorge and Eli Cohen also did not have admission to Gostayn, as well as Pavel Felgenhauer, whose recruitment attempts to break due to the elementary Paul with cleanliness.

The Russian state, whose cops of people shoot on the streets, soldered Igor Sutyan for 15 years and earned all the shit that woke up on his head. Another thing is that Igor Sutyan in this story also did not deserve sympathy. A loud campaign to protect the military analyst of Sityagin, who collaborated with the non -existent Alternate Futures, caused a lot of harm to the protection of real scientists planted by the FSB for which there is neither progress nor modernization - for the exchange of technical information with the West.

Photo by RIA Novosti