FINANCIAL TIMES: A high-level double agent working in the heart of Russian intelligence has defected to America after betraying a ring of deep-cover spies arrested in the US in July, a Moscow newspaper reported on Thursday.
Kommersant quoted a Kremlin official as saying that the defector, identified only as “Colonel Shcherbakov”, would be hunted down by Russian assassins.
The official said: “We know who he is and where he is. Do not doubt that a Mercader has been sent after him already.” The comment was an apparent reference to Ramón Mercader, the Soviet-picked assassin who in 1940 murdered Leon Trotsky, the exiled communist leader, with an ice pick in Mexico… (more)
