No Homeland Glory for Russian Spies

MOSCOW, July, 2010— -- The 10 spies sent back to Mother Russia in a swap with the United States received a less than glorious welcome, swept away from the Moscow airport in a black minivan and kept out of public view.

"What? To tell you the truth I don't know, I haven't seen it on TV and can't help you," a Russian woman said when told about the arrests in the United States and the swap for four people who were imprisoned in Russia for spying.

Local media offered little coverage of the arrival, labeling it the "happy ending" and changing their coverage toward the four Russian citizens transferred to United Kingdom and United States.

Moskovsky Komsomolets, a prominent Russian newspaper, buried the story under the front page coverage about the octopus in German that had been predicting World Cup results.

What coverage there was of the events, mostly criticized the spies as amateurs.

Headlines such as "Spy Scandal comes out into a new level of farce: CIA Agents are being exchanged for who knows what," on Zagolovki.ru, condemned the government's decision.

"It was a first time ever that Russian media mocked and ridiculed some of the agents involved in the spy network in America," said Alexander Nekrassov, a former Kremlin advisor.

Independent radio Moscow Echo, known as one of the most liberal radio stations, went as far as to announce a contest for caricatures called "Russian Spies in the U.S.A."

"I view this situation like one of the brightest theater plays of nonsense," Genadiy Gudkov, deputy president of the Russian Parliament security committee, told Moskovskiy Komsomolets. "Our intelligence has completely forgotten how to work."

Many of the Russian population gave no thought to the recent events. An independent poll conducted by Levada Center found that 41 percent of Russians had not heard about the spy scandal.