From Russia with love, Anna Chapman’s story

In what could be regarded as a throw back, the greatest remembrance of the cold war era, when the western world and the eastern blocs were at each other throat, a well crafted and executed spy ring was busted on June 27, 2010.Like a script out of James Bond’s series, a 10-man sleeper team was inserted by the SVR (Sluzhba Vneshney Razvedki), the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, successor agency to the KGB, into the United States. For a period of time they operated stealthy but steadily, defying all detections. Quickly they freely mingle with the local folks, moving, wining and dining with the high and mighty.



Among the Russian spy ring list was the glamorous, pretty, model-like beau idéal -Anna Chapman. A woman with some esoteric talent, personality and gait which leave very little to the imagination, an ultimate femme fatale .She could be said to be an archetype of the divine femme fatale of Hindu mythology, Mohini who is said to have enchanted gods, demons and sages alike.

Outstanding details have shown that most of the sleeper agents lived an alleged mundane suburban family lives. While others, like Anna, were operating as glamorous single partygoers. For instance, The New York Post calls Anna- a "flame-haired, 007-worthy beauty who flirted from high-profile parties to top-secret meetings around Manhattan."

Anna-Chapman-Maxim photo shoot


Anna, the 28-year-old redhead reportedly owned an online real estate business worth $2 million and lived in a "fancy Financial District apartment, "Her Facebook page is stocked with glamour shots worthy of a model, several times, snapshots of her attending high profile events and gathering had emerged. For instance, she had been seen attending high-society events like the 2010 FDNY Foundation Dinner and an Armory Show Kickoff Party hosted by Whitewall Magazine. She was the perfect woman any man could have desired, expect the Pope of course. She fitted in quite dramatically and performed her duties as a spy to the best of her abilities and beyond her handlers’ expectations, if you ask me.


Anna poses for men's Magazine,in Russia


However, like all good story that turned orgy and ugly, her lucks and that of her colleagues ran out flat, when Colonel Scherbakov, who worked for Russia's SVR foreign intelligence service, where he oversaw a top-secret program to dispatch long-term sleeper agents or "illegals" to the United States blew the lid and gave out unwittingly the ten sleeper agents. Colonel Scherbakov was noted and purportedly said to have been the one who gave the FBI the names of the 10 sleeper agents. On June 28, 2010, Anna Chapman stood before a judge in a Manhattan federal court along with four others arrested on charges of conspiring to act as "unregistered agents of a foreign government." The alleged spies sometimes worked in pairs and pretended to be married so they could blend in as the couple next door while working as spies in a throwback to the Cold War, complete with fake identities, invisible ink, coded radio transmissions and encrypted data to avoid detection, authorities say.

According to the Russian intelligence officials, he used to serve the SVR from where he came to know about the secret program of the Russian government to send 10 qualified sleeper agents to the United States. Why the colonel carried out such action, still remained a mystery to many.

Anna; her Face book Profile pix

However, Moscow is not lying low as far as the treachery of Colonel Scherbakov is concerned. As a deterrent, well trained killer squad is presently set loose to track him down at all cost .And Moscow is not making it a secret any longer that a Mercader has been sent after the betrayer and that they also know who he is and where he is right now .Historically, Ramon Mercader was the KGB assassin who murdered the exiled Bolshevik leader Leon Trotsky with an ice pick in Mexico in 1940. A "Mercader" is therefore, a synonym for a hit squad.


None of the sources had revealed the colonel first name but available sources had shown that he lives in the U.S. with his daughter, who has been a longtime resident of the United States, while his son had moved there in earlier 2010.Moreover, Russian parliament’s national security committee had revealed that the colonel turned over the Russian agents in the U.S. a very long time back and they were aware of it much before it was revealed by a famous Russian newspaper. Colonel Scherbakov absconded from Russia and headed towards USA three days before President Dmitry Medvedev visited Washington in June, 2010. Since then, the colonel has been a huge target for the Russian officials.

At a Russian space launch farewell ceremony on oct 7,2010.

To show the gratitude of the Russian people, the Russian government threw a hero’s welcome to all of the 10 sleeper agents and awarded them top Kremlin honours ,after they had been sent back to Russia in what appeared to be one of the greatest agents swap in modern history. The 10 compromised agents were exchanged for four men convicted by Russia of being Western spies a month later in July, 2010 in what is now regarded as the biggest spy swap since the Cold War era. The Russian press believed she and her colleague had done marvelously for their mother land "Anna has done more to arouse patriotism in Russians than our football team and the Bulava missile put together, “They like to say. As is well known Russia's national football team has been through a thin period while the army's new Bulava nuclear-capable missile has mis-fired several times in testing.



Vladimir Putin, who served as a KGB agent in East Germany during the Eighties, hinted that he knew the identity of the traitor. Saying, that "This was the result of treason and traitors always end badly," the Russian prime minister said. And that it always ends badly for traitors as their end comes from drink or drugs or by lying in the gutter. While, other high ranking officers in the Russian government like Gennady Gudkov, the deputy chairman of the powerful security committee in the lower house of Russia's parliament, maintained that he had known that Col Scherbakov was the traitor.

Anna Chapman is back in the public eye after stripping down for the Russian version of Maxim magazine

He called for a parliamentary inquiry into the fiasco amid calls for Mikhail Fradkov, the head of the SVR, to resign."The damage committed by the colonel to the state is too enormous" not to have further repercussions, Mr Gudkov told the Interfax news agency. The view among Russia's intelligence community was that the incident was one of the worst setbacks it had suffered.
The disclosure continues to stoke speculation that Russia's intelligence services may be restructured as an investigation into how a double agent could have operated at such a high level continued."This is a big mix-up that will see heads roll and people demoted”. The most valuable of the 10 Russian agents exposed appears to be Mikhail Vasenkov, who operated under the name Juan Lazaro.

Merry-go round.

Intelligence sources claimed he had been able to obtain the U.S. president's travel agenda years in advance. He was picked up while trying to board a flight for Hungary, and was believed by the U.S’ authorities to be the sleeper agent’s handler. The U.S. investigators were believed to have broken his leg and three ribs while interrogating him. While the 11th and last suspect Christopher Metsos was arrested Tuesday (June 29th) in Cyprus.

Meanwhile, Anna-the extraordinary girl is back in Russia, doing what could be considered as her first love-politics and posing for magazines. She recently in early 2011 mysterious resurfaced at Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazstastan to watch Russian and U.S. astronauts blast off into space.



*Except where otherwise quoted, most materials for this piece was sourced from- The Daily Telegraph, THAINDIAN NEWS etc.