Cynics will surely rue this apparently ‘disproportionate’ deal—10 to 4. Messrs Obama and Medvedev, however, seem to have something else in mind. In what is possibly one of the biggest secret ‘spy-swaps’ in the post Cold War scenario, a US federal court in Manhattan in New York released 10 convicts convicted of espionage charges after they pleaded guilty. They are likely to be deported immediately. The reciprocation followed soon when President Medvedev reportedly granted pardon to four Russian prisoners. They include Igor Sutyagin, a former nuclear scientist working for CIA, Sergei Skripal, Alexander Zaporozhsky and Gennadiy Vasilenko, all convicted of espionage.
US Attorney General, Eric Holder has hailed this case as ‘extraordinary’ and described in ‘the interests’ of US. Five of the defendants in US have revealed their true identities for the first time in public. This includes Vladimir Guryev alias Richard Murphy and Lydia Guryev alias Cynthia Murphy among a host of others. While this ‘exchange’ stands nowhere near the famous ‘exchange’ of Gary Powers and Soviet agent, Colonel Rudolf Abel back in sixties, analysts believe there is more to it than meets the eye.
What explains this sudden goodwill? President Medvedev’s eagerness for Russia’s entry into the World Trade Organization is widely perceived to be the reason for Kremlin’s capitulation. In the wake of the sanctions imposed on Iran, the US is also banking on Russian support to rein in Iran. Nevertheless, those who disapprove of an ‘eye’ for ‘eye’ policy would hail this sp‘eye’ for a sp‘eye’ deal.
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