Moscow, Russia - Russia's domestic intelligence agency has had a busy 2001, foiling plots by terrorists and religious sects and spearheading Moscow's crackdown in rebel Chechnya, on top of its usual spy-catcher duties.
Federal Security Service chief Nikolai Patrushev told media chiefs on Tuesday that his
FSB had caught red-handed 10 foreigners, including one special agent, spying
for various intelligence services.
Since January the FSB, the main
successor to the Soviet-era KGB, has also been leading the ''counter-terrorist''
operation in Chechnya, carrying out 43 security operations, including two
large-scale ones, Patrushev said.
In the past year, 1,689 rebel
fighters and foreign mercenaries had been killed, including six leading field
commanders and nine second-tier commanders.
Nevertheless, ''countering
foreign intelligence special services remains one of the main tasks for Russian
security services,'' Interfax news agency quoted Patrushev as saying.
Foreign agents were targeting
information on Russia's integration into world bodies, domestic and foreign
policy choices, military policy, as well as scientific and technical
innovations, he said.
Legal cases brought by the FSB in
2001 had helped cut leaks of state secrets abroad, Patrushev said. The
activities of some 50 foreign spies had been ended, and espionage networks from
Turkey, Pakistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and other states had been deprived of
their sources, he added.
In addition, the FSB had
prevented 27 ''international terrorists'' from entering Russian territory, as
well as 16 members of the Aum Shinrikyo doomsday sect. Five of its members are
currently on trial in the far eastern port city of Vladivostok over a weapons
and blackmail plot.
THE SPY WHO SUED ME
While publicity is generally
anathema to the cloak-and-dagger world of espionage, the FSB has brought a
string of of high-profile court cases in 2001, a year that also saw a
spectacular spy row erupt with the United States.
On February 18, the U.S. officials
arrested FBI agent Robert Hanssen for selling secrets to Moscow, a scandal that
saw Washington order 50 Russian diplomats to leave the country by July. Moscow
responded in kind.
In March, Moscow expelled three
Bulgarian diplomats in retaliation for a request that Russia withdraw three of
its diplomats suspected of spying.
A month later, Russian scientist
Valentin Danilov, head of a physics centre in Siberia, was charged with treason
for allegedly try to sell space technology to China. He denies the charge. The
same month, the FSB said Valery Ojamae had been sentenced to seven years for
spying for Britain and Estonia.
On August 14, a Moscow court
jailed for more than four years former diplomat Valentin Moiseyev for handing
South Korea secrets about Russia's relations with Stalinist North Korea.
And in October, three Russian
brothers were jailed for revealing state secrets and spying.
In addition, a number of
academics are fighting treason charges brought by the FSB.