TV OR REALITY?
United States, New York: According to Afp, the television show “The Americans”, a critically acclaimed thriller about husband-and-wife KGB agents who kill, spy and lie in suburban Washington DC, returned to US TV screens on January 28 for a third season.
Almost at the same time, federal prosecutors (http://rt.com/usa/226447-russian-spies-fbi-york/ ) in the United States were announcing charges against three Russian men who allegedly operated an international spy ring based out of New York City.
US attorneys said that Evgeny Buryakov, Igor Sporyshev, and Victor Podobnyy had been charged “in connection with Buryakov’s service as a covert intelligence agent on behalf of the Russian Federation.”
The US Federal Bureau of Investigation said that their investigation into the three co-defendants began shortly after ten alleged Russian spies, including Anna Chapman, were arrested in 2010 following a multi-year investigation.
According to the FBI, Buryakov maintained a cover job in the US as an employee in the Manhattan office of a Russian bank, but actually worked to gather intelligence for Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, SVR. A public LinkedIn profile for a man with the same name as Buryakov suggests he may have been working as a deputy representative in the US for Russia’s Vnesheconombank.
