A judge in New York has ordered 10 defendants who admitted acting as Russian spies deported from the United States in a swap that results in four spies being released by Russia. Federal Judge Kimba Wood announced the resolution of the case Thursday as she went immediately from guilty pleas to a conspiracy charge by the defendants to a brief sentencing in Manhattan. It was expected that the defendants would be sent out of the country within hours of the historic spy swap, the largest between the US and Russia since the Cold War. The defendants were arrested last week after more than a decade of spying on the United States. Igor Sutyagin, a Russian arms control analyst serving a 14-year sentenced for spying for the United States, had told his relatives he was going to be one of 11 convicted spies in Russia who would be freed in exchange for 11 people charged in the United States with being Russian agents. They said he was going to be sent to Vienna, then London. A Justice Department letter says the Russian government will release four people accused of betraying Russia to the West as part of an international spy swap. According to the letter, the four are imprisoned in Russia for alleged contact with Western intelligence agencies. A swap would have significant consequences for efforts between Washington and Moscow to repair ties chilled by a deepening atmosphere of suspicion. The defendants each announced their pleas to conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign country. An 11th defendant was a fugitive after he fled authorities in Cyprus following his release on bail. “It's a resolution that will put this thing behind him as quickly as we can arrange it,” said Peter Krupp, an attorney for Donald Heathfield, before the hearing. He would not say whether the plea involves a swap. The arrests occurred more than a week ago, capping a decade-plus investigation of people who seemed to have embedded themselves in the fabric of American life. Authorities said they were reporting what they learned in the US to Russian officials.
