Exchange or deception?

The sensational espionage exchange should be considered not so much as the greater victory of the two -headed Kremlin, but as a big loss of the Barack Obama administration. The exchange was undertaken in order to prevent even more domestic political loss for the American president. The long process over ten Russian spies-illegals could thoroughly undermine both the "reboot" of Russian-American relations declared by Obama and its internal positions. Indeed, from the materials of the process it would once again be obvious that, despite all the declarations about the “reboot”, “new quality” and “breakthrough” in relations between Moscow and Washington, the Russian authorities are still considering America as the main potential enemy. As you know, the scouts-illegals, and even in whole networks, are placed in the country primarily in case of war, when diplomatic relations are torn, and the work of residents of special services acting under diplomatic cover will become impossible. Undoubtedly, during the process, the defendants would have told a lot that would cause a blow to the image of Russia, as if refusing the heritage of the Cold War, and this would not fail to take advantage of those circles that criticize Obama in relations with Russian tandemocrats.

The fact that the initiative to exchange spies came from the American side, which called the alleged exchange participants, freed from Russian prisons, it proves that for Washington the political feasibility of continuing the “rebooting” of Russian-American relations turned out to be much more important than the complete and public exposure of the Russian espionage network. This case resembles the behavior of the British government (though on several other grounds) in the case of the obscenity of the Soviet spy Kim Filby. He was exposed, but preferred to let him go through the Middle East to Moscow, since in England they feared that the open process over him would put up the British intelligence services and government structures in an unseemly light.

Thus, the rejection of the loud spy process, extremely untimely, both for foreign policy and for domestic political reasons, is the only winning of the American president. There are much more losses for the American side, and they are obvious.

The main of them is the actual carte blanche, issued in the United States to Russian illegal immigrants, which will probably now act much more prudently than their so -indurate predecessors. And at the same time, Russian illegal residents may be sure that in the case of exposing the maximum that they are threatened, this is a short conclusion after the arrest and an ambulance to Russia.

Joseph Biden, justifying about the unequivalent, according to many Americans, the exchange of spies, said: "In fact, we got a good four back. And this dozen ... Well, they worked here for a long time, but did not do much." Here, the US vice president had to deceive. Moreover, the representative of the State Department stated that the American side denies the justice of the accusations that were brought by four Russians in Russia. However, special services and diplomats are not at all inclined to recognize the accusations of their agents of espionage. But an objective analysis shows that the liberated four can hardly be called not only particularly valuable spies, but also spies in general.

Indeed, of the four so -called American and British spies participating in the exchange, one, Igor Sutyan, is certainly not a spy by all the standards adopted in the civilized world. He is probably a good analyst, but not a spy in any way, since he worked only with the data of open sources, which was forced to recognize both the investigation and the court, which did not prevent the latter from spreading Sutyan in a solid term. Two others, Alexander Zaporizhzhya and Gennady Vasilenko, are also hardly real spies. The first of them, being in the USA and becoming an American citizen, subsequently several times quite legally came to Russia, which means he did not feel any guilt before Russian law. The second was generally sentenced in 2006 for only three years of colony-settlement for illegal storage of weapons and ammunition and, by all standards, would be released long before the espionage exchange, but nevertheless, for some reason, before his departure in the United States, remained in conclusion. Only the fourth participant in the exchange of the Russian side, former GRU officer Sergei Skripal, perhaps, was, as they say, a real spy. He seemed to admit his guilt during the process, for which he received 13 years instead of 15 years of imprisonment, as the prosecution demanded. However, there is little specific information about the Skripal case, and it is difficult to judge whether he really sold secret information to British intelligence. The remaining three, Sutyan, Zaporizhzhya and Vasilenko, I repeat, are victims of the desire of Russian special services at any cost to find spies in their ranks in order to fill out the corresponding column of reporting.

And then another aspect of exchange rises - moral. Unlike the exchanges of the Soviet era, when Abel, the young and others issued by the Soviet Union, have already managed to sit in prison for several years, their current Russian colleagues spent a few weeks before the exchange. But from the Russian side, full-fledged prison sites participated in the exchange, who managed to spend a significant part of the term measured by the court or even the entire term (as it was with Vasilenko, for some reason not released for freedom). Moreover, three of the four, with the exception of Skripal, did not do any confessions in the spying until exchange. Vasilenko, obviously, admitted only to illegal storage of weapons. Sutyan and Zaporizhzhya guilt did not admit. Now, as it became known, Sutyan, the most politically resonant of all the participants in the exchange, was forced to admit crimes that he did not commit, since the Russian side stated his recognition as an indispensable exchange condition. It is not known whether Zaporizhzhya admitted anything. Perhaps, from him, as an American citizen, they still did not demand such recognition. But for the Russian side, the main thing was to get such a recognition from Sutyagin and quickly get rid of him and the international hype associated with this case. And with the help of the American side, she achieved this.

It turns out that a Russian citizen was not only forced to admit that he did not commit, but also forced him to leave his homeland and emigrate to England, although Sutyan, as far as is known, was not going to leave the country. And where is the observance of human rights, about which the American administration likes to talk about his respect for? But the Americans could, having in their hands, all the trump cards in the form of ten Russian scouts-allegors captured with the red-handed ten, demand a preliminary meeting of their representatives with the same Sutyan and other exchange participants. And these representatives could explain to them that no confession of guilt from them is required, that they will still be changed to the failed Russian spies. Involuntarily, the impression is that the goal of Obama in this whole story was not only to muffle the spy scandal, but also to help Medvedev and Putin best to close the scandalous business of Sityagin. Now, Russian intelligence agencies can safely factory new espionage affairs against innocent people in order to have a solid exchange fund to eliminate the consequences of inevitable future failures. After all, as the story with ten illegal spies showed, the professionalism of reconnaissance compared to Soviet times fell simply catastrophically.