America, Russia swap spies
Washington, July 9: The United States and Russia have completed a spy swap in Vienna, the US Justice Department said in a statement on Friday, confirming Moscow had released four people in exchange for 10 Russian agents.
“The United States has successfully transferred ten Russian agents to the Russian Federation and the Russian Federation has released four individuals who had been incarcerated in Russia,” the department said.
“The exchange of these individuals took place in Vienna, Austria, and has been completed,” it added.
The 10 Russian spies, rounded up in an FBI swoop last month, were expelled late on Thursday after pleading guilty in court to acting as foreign agents, and were flown straight from New York to Vienna.
They then boarded a Russian emergencies ministry plane for Moscow, arriving earlier on Friday, airport officials said.
It was not immediately clear where the four people released by Russia — who had been accused by Moscow of acting for Western intelligence agencies — had been taken after arriving in Vienna on Friday.
Reports from New York say the top espionage chiefs of the United States and Russia handled the complex negotiations leading to the biggest spy swap since the Cold War, the Wall Street Journal reported on Friday.
Mr Leon Panetta, director of the Central Intelligence Agency, and his Moscow counterpart, led the negotiations, the report said, quoting unnamed sources close to the matter.
The deal was seen as a high-level solution to a spy scandal that threatened to disrupt improving US-Russian relations.
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