MOSCOW. Dec 18 (Interfax-AVN) - The Russian counterintelligence services have caught red-handed ten foreign spies in 2001, among them six career officers of foreign special services and one agent.
Russian special services have revealed a total of 130 career officers of foreign intelligence agencies and started working on them, and espionage and other subversive activities of over 30 of them have been prevented in 2001, Director of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) Nikolai Patrushev said at a Tuesday meeting with heads of the leading Russian media.
"Counteraction against foreign special services remains a prime task for Russian security agencies," he said.
Foreign intelligence services are chiefly concentrated on gathering information reflecting the development of Russia as a democratic state within the world community structure, its domestic and foreign political preferences, military policy and ways of its implementation, and the orientation of scientific research and technical experiments, Patrushev said.
Foreign special services are particularly interested in fundamental scientific studies, the latest military technologies, and up-to-date samples of military hardware, the FSB director said. The sphere of foreign intelligence interests also embraces issues related to the Russian economy and its financial, trade, and resources market, he said.
A priority objective for foreign special agencies is also "to set up own positions in Russian authority structures and acquire sources of information both in the center and in Russia's regions," Patrushev said.
Purposeful work of operative and investigation divisions of the Russian security agencies in 2001 was instrumental in localizing and criminally prosecuting a number of foreign agents, which helped block channels of leakage of state secrets abroad, he said.
"In all, illegal activities of almost 50 agents of foreign special services, including six Russian citizens, have been curbed. Special services of Turkey, Pakistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, and a number of other states have lost valuable informers," Patrushev said.
The FSB director cited a sentence of seven years in prison for high treason in the form of espionage handed down by the Moscow City Court on Valery Ojamae, an agent of British and Estonian intelligence agencies and a former officer of a Russian special service, in April 2001.
Patrushev also recalled that in August 2001, former Russian Foreign Ministry official Valentin Moiseyev was found guilty of spying for South Korean special services and sentenced to four and a half years in prison.