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Russian 'spy': MP denies his researcher is Moscow sleeper agent

yellow people

Alfrescian (Inf)
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Russian 'spy': Lib Dem MP Mike Hancock denies researcher facing deportation is Moscow sleeper agent

A young Russian woman working in the House of Commons for the Liberal Democrat MP Mike Hancock is facing deportation as a suspected spy.

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Katia Zatuliveter has written articles that criticised Nato while defending military action by Russia. Photo: East2West News



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Mike Hancock, the MP whose Russian aide is to be deported. Photo: SOLENT

By Martin Beckford 12:00PM GMT 05 Dec 2010

Katia Zatuliveter, a researcher for an MP on the influential defence select committee, is to be expelled from Britain after being questioned on suspicion of espionage by security services. Mr Hancock has recently asked sensitive questions in Parliament about the quantities of radioactive materials held by the country and the future of its nuclear deterrent.

Miss Zatuliveter has also worked for a defence think-tank and written articles that criticised Nato while defending military action by Russia.
However Mr Hancock, the Lib Dem member for Portsmouth South, denied she was a sleeper agent for Moscow and insisted the authorities had never raised their concerns with him.

Mr Hancock, who is presently on police bail over an alleged indecent assault against a female constituent, said: “She is not a Russian spy. I know nothing about espionage, but she has been subjected to a deportation order. "She is appealing it, because she feels - quite rightly - that she has done nothing wrong."

Asked about MI5’s fear that his researcher had been a spy, he said: “No-one has ever said to me under any circumstances whatsoever that she has been involved in anything like that. “It is now in the hands of her lawyers. I am sure that in the end she will be proved to be right.”

Miss Zatuliveter, 25, studied for a Master's degree in Britain and worked for the UK Defence Forum where in 2008 she wrote a piece on the “Misguided US role in the conflict between Georgia and South Ossetia”, claiming that “Russia had to intervene” in the affairs of its tiny neighbours and had been “provoked” by the US and Nato.

She has been as a Parliamentary Assistant and Researcher to Mr Hancock, who sits on the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Russia as well as the Commons defence select committee, for more than two years, having previously worked as an intern for him.

Among recent written questions put down by the MP was one asking the Defence Secretary to publish “a full historical inventory of the UK’s nuclear arsenal”, another asking for “an update on the quantities of (a) plutonium, (b) enriched uranium and (c) other special nuclear materials that are outside international safeguards” and a series about the future of the Trident submarines.

She was given a Commons pass and underwent security vetting before starting her job, but in August this year, Miss Zatuliveter and a friend were stopped at Gatwick Airport and questioned by immigration officers. She is now awaiting deportation back to Russia, reportedly after Theresa May, the Home Secretary, was briefed by MI5 about her alleged activities.

A source told newspapers: “Her presence here is not considered to be conducive to national security. There was unhappiness about what she could have access to.” It comes amid continuing strain in relations between Britain and Russia and fears of a return to Cold War-level intelligence activities, following the poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko, a dissident spy, in London four years ago.

Over the summer a Russian spy ring was uncovered in America including a young woman who had British citizenship, Anna Chapman.

 

yellow people

Alfrescian (Inf)
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Spy story: Andrei, Katia's father, is a former Communist


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Russian doll: Katia in costume at her school graduation


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Posing: A more recent photograph of Katia, in the North Yorkshire seaside resort of Whitby


 
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