One of the ten Russian deep-cover spies who were arrested in the United States in 2010, and swapped with American- and British-handled spies held by Moscow, has spoken to Western media for the first time.
Elena Vavilova was
arrested
by the Federal Bureau of Investigation in June of 2010 along with her
husband, Andrei Bezrukov. In its two decades of operating under deep
cover in the US, the married couple used the stolen identities of two
dead Canadian citizens, Tracy Foley and Donald Heathfield. Vavilova
claimed to be of French-Canadian origin and worked as a real estate
agent. The couple never spoke Russian at home and their two sons,
Alex and Tim Foley, were unaware of their parents’ secret identities.
Last week, Vavilova, who now works as a private consultant in Moscow, spoke to Shaun Walker, Russia correspondent for British newspaper The Guardian.
It was the first face-to-face encounter between a Western news outlet
and one of the 10 outed Russian ‘illegals’. The reason for the interview
was Vavilova’s upcoming book, A Woman Who Can Keep Secrets
(in Russian), which presents a fictionalized account of her career and
marriage to Bezrukov. It offers rare insights into the longstanding
Russian ‘illegals’ program, which dates back to Soviet times. The book’s
two protagonists meet as students in Siberia, where they are eventually
recruited by the KGB, and spend several years training in languages and
tradecraft. Part of their training includes living in a KGB house
modeled after suburban American homes, so that they can get used to
domestic life in the West. This account is believed to include true
elements of the lives and careers of Vavilova and Bezrukov. The two
married in Russia but moved to Canada separately, using fake Canadian
identities. They pretended to meet for the first time in Canada, where
they ‘dated’ and eventually ‘married’ before moving to the US to begin
their espionage work.
Vavilova told
Walker that the popular view of the 10 Russian illegals as having
achieved little of intelligence value during their time in the US is
misguided. “Of course I can’t talk about it”, she said, “but I know what
we were doing and it doesn’t matter what others say”. She also said
that training for illegals involved learning how to handle guns and
using martial arts. But she added that these skills were never used in
the field and were mostly good for building self-confidence —especially
for missions that took place under cover of night in America, where
street crime was far more prevalent than in Russia during the Cold War.
Walker said that Vavilova’s English remains perfect, as does her husband’s.
Like Vavilova, Bezrukov now works as a consultant and also teaches at a
university in Moscow. Vavilova refused to discuss current Russian
politics in her interview.
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