Russian spy chief betrays network and defects to US

THE head of Russia’s deep cover US spying operations has betrayed the network and defected, a Russian paper said, potentially giving the West one of its biggest intelligence coups since the end of the Cold War.

The newspaper, Kommersant, named the man as Colonel Shcherbakov, and said he was responsible for unmasking a Russian spy ring in the United States in June whose arrests humiliated Moscow and clouded a “reset” in ties with Washington.

The betrayal would make Shcherbakov one of the most senior turncoats since the fall of the Soviet Union and could have consequences for Russia’s proud Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) and its chief, former prime minister Mikhail Fradkov.