Russia wanted convicted British spy David Smith handed over to them in the largest prisoner swap since the Cold War, sources revealed last night.
But the request was refused, with intelligence officials citing fears he would relay sensitive secrets about Britain’s nuclear deterrent to his Moscow paymasters.
Some two dozen people from countries including Russia, the US, and Germany were involved in last week’s prisoner exchange – which took 18 months to broker.
They included UK-Russian citizen Vladimir Kara-Murza and US reporter Evan Gershkovich, who had been detained by Russia on false treason and espionage charges.
Western releases included Vadim Krasikov, a Russian hitman serving a life sentence in Germany for the 2019 killing of a Georgian citizen in Berlin.
But Moscow would also have netted Smith if it had its way. The 58-year-old was handed a 13-year jail term last year for selling classified secrets to his Russian handlers in Berlin.
Formerly with the RAF, he had been employed as a security guard in the German capital for four years when, in 2020, he communicated with two Russian spies, Generals Sirov and Chukhrov, posing as military attaches at Russia’s embassy.
Disguised as a British embassy communication, his letter to Maj Gen Sergey Chukhrov was intercepted by MI5 and found to contain the names, addresses and phone numbers of colleagues, along with documents and information about security passes.
Smith would spend his nights on duty at the embassy taking photographs of classified documents. They included a “sensitive report addressed to the then Prime Minister of this country, Boris Johnson, sent to him by members of his Cabinet”.
Smith was subsequently caught in two separate sting operations, one involving an MI5 officer posing as a female GRU handler.
Sources say Smith also had a face-to-face meeting with General Chukhrov shortly before his arrest. It was there, sources say, that Smith had promised to deliver “something special” to the Russian general, but was arrested before they met again.
“The information he was so keen to impart concerned matters relating to the UK’s nuclear deterrent,” said an intelligence source. “It is worrying someone at his level should know something of such importance.”
The source added: “It would have been quite out of the question to let him go, even if he had expressed an interest in doing so.”
