Russian President Dmitry Medvedev early Friday pardoned four spies accused of giving top secret information to the West as part of the spy swap underway with the United States.
The documents were signed late in the night, according to Russian news agencies, after the four men pleaded guilty in letters asking Medvedev to pardon them.
The four are to be exchanged for 10 spies for Russia who pleaded guilty in U.S. federal court in New York on Thursday.
The four to be released include a private nuclear researcher, Igor Sutyagin, who has already been spotted getting off a plane in Vienna in an indication the swap had begun before the convictions.
The others are double agents Alexander Zaporozhsky and Sergei Skripal, who was sentenced to 13 years in prison in 2006, and Gennadi Vasilenko.
Vasilenko’s name had not been mentioned previously in speculation about who would be swapped. Double agent Alexander Sypachev, whose name had been mentioned as the fourth, was not on the list of those pardoned by Mr. Medvedev.
The granting of the pardons removed the final barrier to the exchange.
The rapid return home of the 10 Russian spies was the result of “the new spirit of Russian-American relations and the high level of mutual understanding of the presidents of both countries,” the Kremlin said.
