A former Russian police officer, who is serving a prison term in Russia for spying for the US Central Intelligence Agency, wrote an open letter to President Donald Trump, demanding that he be released.
Yevgeny A. Chistov was arrested by the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) in 2014 on charges of spying for Washington. During the trial, he admitted that he was recruited by the CIA when he was working as an officer in the police. Russian state prosecutors accused him of establishing contacts with the CIA in 2011. In 2015, he was sentenced to 13 years in prison, which he is currently serving in a labor camp in the city of Bor, located in central European Russia. Nizhny Novgorod.
On Saturday, the British newspaper The Guardian published a letter to be written by Chistov. In the letter, the spy admits that he had passed Russian state secrets to the CIA for three years. He also claims to have done so out of love for his country and to help "overthrow the regime" of Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Chistov continues to accuse "Putin and his friends" of plundering Russia and oppressing his people through "corruption and extortion".
He blames the Kremlin for Russia's current economic state: "We have a resource-rich country, but our people are poor," he says.
The spy added that he gave the CIA "secret plans" of the Ministry of Interior, provided "names of some members of the FSB" and revealed some objectives of the Russian Defense Ministry. He claims that, even though he was paid by the CIA for his services, he never acted for personal interests.
Chistov claims that the conditions of his detention are inhumane and that he and his family "are in grave danger in Russia". He also claims that his wife visited the US embassy in Ukraine in an attempt to obtain a travel visa, but that her application was denied and she was forced to return to Russia. The spy adds that "he wrote two letters to the CIA asking for help, without receiving any response". He then asked President Trump to help him, suggesting two ways. By granting asylum in the United States to his wife and mother. Second, by exchanging him for someone "who worked for Russia" and who is serving his sentence in a US prison.
The United States participated in very few spy exchanges in the post-Cold War era. In 2010, Washington and Moscow conducted one of the largest espionage exchanges in history: ten Russian agents in prison in the United States were exchanged with four Russian citizens imprisoned by Moscow for espionage for the United States and Great Britain. Four years later, a Cuban intelligence officer who spied for the CIA was released as part of a larger exchange between Washington and Havana.
