Putin sings songs with returned Russian spies, says they have bright future

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin said Saturday he had met with Russian spies swapped in an exchange with the US earlier this month, and promised them a bright future in Russia.

"I met with them. We talked about life. We sang. It was not karaoke but live music," Putin, who himself served as a KGB agent in the former East Germany, told Russian reporters on a visit to Ukraine, according to a transcript posted Sunday on the government website.

"We sang 'From Where the Motherland Begins,'" a Soviet-era song made famous in the wildly popular 1968 US film The Sword and the Shield, about a Soviet spy working in Nazi Germany, the prime minister said. "I'm not joking. I am serious. And (we sang) other songs with a similar content."

The group of 10 spies, many of whom had been working for years undercover in the United States as sleeper agents, returned to Russia earlier this month in a sensational spy swap that saw Moscow send four Russian convicts to the West.

Putin hinted that the agents' cover had been blown as a result of "treason" and that he knew the names of those responsible.

Punishment for any traitors would "not be decided in a press conference," Putin said, adding the special services "live according to their rules."

Many ex-KGB spies have gone on the record slamming the shoddy and apparently antiquated spycraft of the 10, who were working for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service, a successor of the Soviet KGB.

However, Putin indicated that the deported spooks would not be left without employment.

"I do not doubt that they will have an interesting, bright life," the prime minister added.

Agencies