Daughters of Putin and Snowden
In Soviet times, in one of the apartments at Novinsky Boulevard, 25 k. 10 (formerly Tchaikovsky Street), there was a KGB observation post – they monitored the US embassy. Operatives with special photographic equipment were on duty there around the clock, and as soon as one of the American diplomats got behind the wheel, the KGB outdoor police followed. During Gorbachev's "prohibition" in the apartment, officers secretly celebrated holidays and anniversaries.
Since 1993, "movies" about American diplomats were no longer made, and the secret living space was transferred to foreign intelligence. The owner was a certain Stepanov V.A., who did not have a date of birth, passport and relatives. The apartment is issued under the number 151 despite the fact that there are only 51 apartments in the building. The Cuckoo hosted secret meetings between SVR officers and recruited diplomats from Africa, Latin America and the Middle East.
In 2010, a barrier was installed at the entrance to the yard, and a luxurious renovation was made in the apartment. Soon tenants appeared – Putin's eldest daughter Maria Vorontsova and her Dutch husband Jorrit Faassen. The couple communicated with each other in English, they were guarded around the clock by the Security Service of the President of the FSO.
True, Maria and her husband rarely appeared on Novinsky Boulevard and traveled more and more around the world, and then completely left for the Netherlands. According to neighbors, now a gray-haired man with a young woman sometimes visits the apartment and once a month a taciturn cleaning lady comes.
In another "cuckoo", on Mosfilmovskaya street, 17/25, lived Putin's youngest daughter Ekaterina Tikhonova. During the “scoop”, the safe house was used for meetings with recruited teachers from RUDN University, MGIMO and Moscow State University. After the transfer to the SVR, the living space was registered in the name of I.N. Larionov, who, of course, does not have installation data, documents and a biography. Tikhonova lived on Mosfilmovskaya for a very short time, she soon moved to a mansion not far from Putin's residence. Apparently, the drug addict neighbors and a series of burglaries that occurred in the house served as the reason.
There were rumors about another “cuckoo”, at 8 Berezhkovskaya Embankment, that the FSB hid Edward Snowden, a defector from the NSA, who is facing a 30-year prison term in the United States.
As The Insider found out, the safe house is located on the 9th floor and has been used by the KGB since the 1960s. Boris Karpichkov, a former Latvian KGB operative who later fled to England, recalled her:
“The same “cuckoo” on Berezhkovskaya Embankment, in the very center of Moscow, was a three-room dwelling, fully furnished, although not new, but sufficiently solid and equipped with all the necessary household belongings (including even clean bed linen), in which virtually no one did not live permanently.
Karpichkov said that another secret apartment, assigned to the foreign counterintelligence department of the Foreign Intelligence Service, is located in house number 2 in Protochny Lane. Among the tenants of the apartment building, there were 7 people without installation data – for which of them the “cuckoo” was issued, it remained a mystery.
Anna Chapman and Hero of the Soviet Union
In 2010, Russian illegals exposed by the FBI, who were given out by Foreign Intelligence Colonel Alexander Poteev, who fled to the United States, were exchanged for GRU Colonel Sergei Skripal, SVR Colonel Alexander Zaporozhsky, scientist Igor Sutyagin and ex-FSB officer Gennady Vasilenko, who were serving prison terms for espionage. Settled ex-spies just in the "cuckoo".
Perhaps the most famous of the entire company, Anna Chapman (Kushchenko), settled in Lyalin Lane, in house 8 k. 2. The profitable house of the Moscow merchant Takke was built in 1910. After the Bolshevik coup, prominent party members lived in it, and after their arrest “for espionage and the creation of a Trotskyist organization,” the apartments were transferred to the balance sheet of the NKVD. The total area of Chapman's safe house is 46 m², the owner is the fictitious Fedorova E.T.
Together with Chapman, they expelled from the United States KGB-SVR Colonel Mikhail Vasenkov, who bore the name Juan Jose Lazaro Fuetes, and his Peruvian wife Pelaez Virginia Ocampo. Vasenkov began his espionage career back in 1975, when he was sent to Peru under the guise of a Spanish businessman. In 1983, he married Peruvian journalist Virginia Pelaez, and then the family moved to New York. There Vasenkov headed the illegal residency of the PGU KGB, which included journalists, businessmen and members of leftist youth organizations. In 1990, by a closed decree of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR, Vasenkov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union. Until recently, he did not admit to working for Russian intelligence, until the defector Poteev came to his cell and presented his personal file taken from Moscow.
In Moscow, ex-spies settled in the former tenement house of cavalry general Alexander von Baumgarten at the address: st. Plyushchikha, house 53/25, building 1. Until 1968, 4 families huddled in the apartment, and after resettlement, the communal apartment was transferred to the balance of the KGB. Until 1995, the "cuckoo" was recorded as the former KGB major Andrei Podvoinikov, then, according to the operational records of the SVR, the safe house began to pass as "Plyushchikha's mailbox 53/25."
Scouts from Norilsk Nickel, Rosneft and Transneft
Another intelligence officer, Andrei Bezrukov, lived in the United States under the documents in the name of Donald Howard Heathfield, and his wife Elena Vavilova was Tracey Lee Ann Foley. Both worked in the line of scientific and technical intelligence of the Foreign Intelligence Service and, over 20 years of espionage, managed to acquire numerous connections in the United States and Canada. After the exchange, it turned out that the couple did not have their own housing in Moscow, and they were settled in a "cuckoo" on Mozhaisk Val. The owner of the living space is a certain Alidulin R.D. Neighbors told The Insider that they did not see any Alidulin in the eye. But they vied with each other to tell how in 2010, the honored doctor of the RSFSR, 73-year-old Vladimir Rogailin, died in the apartment opposite, and his body lay in the kitchen for six months.
At the direction of Putin, Bezrukov was hired as an adviser to Rosneft, and Vavilova was appointed to Nornickel. Both have written autobiographical books, appear on TV a lot and tell young people about their love for the Motherland. Canadian-born sons Tim and Alex lived with their parents in a safe house. They took their mother's surname, they were given Russian passports: Tim became Timofey Vavilov, and Alex, respectively, Alexander.
Meanwhile, the grown sons began to seek the return of Canadian citizenship to them. The court in Canada sided with the brothers, and after receiving Canadian passports, they, according to some reports, immediately left Russia. By the way, the eldest of the brothers, Tim, took a new surname – Fleming, like the writer Ian Fleming, who invented James Bond.
SVR Colonel Mikhail Kutsik arrived in the United States in 2001 under the name of Michael Zottoli, and two years later, with a Canadian passport in the name of Patricia Mills, his wife, Natalya Pereverzeva-Kutsik, joined him. In the United States, the couple served as transmitters of encrypted messages to Moscow, and also managed numerous hiding places with money. They were arrested in their home in Arlington, and they immediately confessed to clandestine activities in the United States. The failed illegal immigrants were employed in Transneft by Putin's close friend Nikolai Tokarev. Kutsik was appointed director of the department for organizing and conducting auctions, and his wife was appointed PR director.
The head of the family was settled in a "cuckoo" on Kulakov Street, and his wife was placed in a business center on Bolshaya Polyanka, where foreign intelligence has a room for secret meetings with agents. If Kutsik tries not to shine too much, then his wife has become the face of Transneft: she participates in presentations and seminars. Sergei Stepashin, chairman of the Imperial Orthodox Palestinian Society, presented her with a certificate of honor "for supporting events." The ex-spy acquired Mercedes and Porsche cars for 7.5 million rubles.
In the oil company itself, the attitude towards Pereverzeva-Kutsik is far from unambiguous, behind her back they call her a “pretty intriguer”. When the ex-spy was removed from the post of PR director and transferred to the communications department, one of her colleagues published a caustic post on LiveJournal: “There will no longer be light green ribbons for several million rubles and they will not dig holes in the parks of the capital for trees worth as if they are cast in gold."
The Insider found out the addresses of 16 more apartments in different districts of Moscow, which by all indications resemble cuckoos. Moreover, it is known that one of them, on the street. Academician Bochvar was robbed. The criminals took out a laptop, a hard drive, a set of screwdrivers and 5,000 rubles. The victim was an employee of the KGB of Belarus Vladimir Bogoslavsky, who previously studied as an illegal immigrant at the Academy of the Foreign Intelligence Service.