Vasenkov Mikhail Anatolyevich - employee of the Department "C" of the First Main Directorate of the Committee for State Security of the USSR, colonel.
Born in 1942 * year in the city of Kuntsevo, Moscow Region (now - within the city of Moscow) in the family of a participant in the Great Patriotic War. Russian.
He served in Directorate "C" (illegal intelligence) of the First Main Directorate (foreign intelligence) of the State Security Committee (KGB) of the USSR - the Foreign Intelligence Service of the Russian Federation (SVR of Russia). Was at illegal work in foreign countries, including Spain and Peru.
On March 13, 1976, he arrived from Spain in Peru with a passport of a citizen of Uruguay in the name of Juan José Lazaro Fuentes, born in 1946. According to legend, before that he lived in Barcelona from the age of seven. A year earlier, in Peru, as a result of another military coup, the pro-socialist junta was overthrown. In Moscow, fears arose that General F. Morales Bermudez, who had come to power, would take a course towards rapprochement with the United States, and one of Vasenkov's tasks was to clarify the political intentions of the new leadership of the country. He soon settled in Lima as a journalism student at the University of San Martín de Porres, martial arts coach and photographer for several metropolitan magazines.
In 1979 he received the citizenship of Peru. In 1983, he married the Peruvian journalist Virginia (Vicky) Pelaez Ocampo. In 1984, a dramatic episode occurred when Vicki was captured by militants of the radical left-wing Revolutionary Movement named after Tupac Amaru, and in 1985 the couple decided to move to New York City (USA), citing the lack of working conditions in Lima. In the US, J. Lazaro worked as a photojournalist and published in left-wing magazines. He received a degree in political science from the New School for Social Research, after which he taught a course in Latin American politics at Baruch College in Manhattan in 2008 for a semester. Lived in Yonkers, New York.
By the Decree of the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR ("closed") of January 12, 1990, for the courage and heroism shown in the line of duty, Colonel Vasenkov Mikhail Anatolievich He was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union with the Order of Lenin and the Gold Star medal.
On June 27, 2010, among a whole group of illegal immigrants, he was arrested by US intelligence agencies. On July 8, 2010, in accordance with the decision of the US court and the Russian-American agreement, 14 Russian intelligence officers, including M.A. Vasenkov and his wife were exchanged for 4 Russian citizens ** who were serving sentences for treason and pardoned by the President of the Russian Federation.
According to media publications, shortly before his arrest, he was promoted to the rank of major general.
Lives in Moscow.
Major General.
He was awarded the Soviet Orders of Lenin (01/12/1990), the Red Star (02/16/1988), the Russian Order (2010), and medals.
Until now, it is forbidden to disclose any details of M.A. Vasenkov, for which he received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union.
In preparing the biography, information from open sources was used, in particular, published on the websites:
Sources (the same ones who were afraid to talk on the phone) reported in a terrible secret that “under the guise of a fashion photographer, Juan Lazaro traveled all over Latin America, along the way acquiring acquaintances among politicians and businessmen”, that his wife Vicky Pelaez was an “influential journalist”, and Vasenkov's acquaintances included "high-ranking functionaries from the left wing of the US Democratic Party."
“The biography of Vasenkov-Lazaro was so impeccable that, even having arrested him, the American intelligence services were powerless to prove the connection of the detainee with Russian intelligence. A gray-haired respected family man sat in front of the investigators, whose children, wife, numerous neighbors ... were ready to confirm under oath any fact from the life of a respectable 65-year-old American Lazaro, ”Kommersant writes. And so it would have continued if the bloody traitor, Colonel Shcherbakov, had not appeared in the cell to the new Sorge.
“The one who came in Russian told the arrested person his name and surname, rank, place of work, after which he said: “Mikhail Anatolyevich, you need to confess and surrender.” But even here Vasenkov answered in Spanish that he did not understand what language this man spoke! And only when the traitor handed over to the Americans a folder with Vasenkov's personal file, he "named his real name, adding that he did not intend to say anything else." The Americans broke three of his ribs and a leg, but he still remained silent. Nails would be made of these people!
With such an abundance of heroic details, you somehow lose sight of the main thing: what, in fact, did the “valuable illegal immigrant” scout for?
From his own point of view, no shit.
The American accusation in the summer contained the following quote from a conversation between Juan Lazaro and Vicki Pelaez, recorded back in 2002. Lazaro: "They say my information isn't worth a damn because I don't give sources." Pelaez: "And you put the name of any politician."
Then Lazaro continues to complain about his bosses: “I will write to them what they want. But I will continue to report what I report. If they don't like what I tell them, so much the worse for them... They say their hands are tied. They don't care about the country."
What exactly was reported by "the most valuable of illegal immigrants" such that even the Moscow center did not take him seriously?
It's hard to say for sure, but I'll venture one guess. It is connected with the biography of the “valuable illegal immigrant”, which peaked in 2008, when the “impeccable family man” as a temporary professor lectured at Baruch College for a whole semester.
There he acted no worse than the commissioner of the Nashi movement. To the astonished students, the “valuable illegal” informed that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan was staged by the bloody American imperialists under pressure from the military lobby; praised the great man Hugo Chavez and noted that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is a hostage of paramilitary groups that monopolize the drug trade (US ally Alvaro Uribe, if anyone does not know, made huge and very effective efforts to destroy the power of the drug mafia in Colombia).
Since Baruch College is not Seliger, the “valuable illegal immigrant” was driven away for the next semester.
The super spy did not hide his radical views and in 1990 even managed to publish an article glorifying Sendero Luminoso (“Shining Path” - a Peruvian left-wing extremist organization that widely used terrorist forms of activity). It was, to put it mildly, imprudent, if only because the wife of a valuable illegal immigrant, the Peruvian journalist Vicky Pelaez, was allegedly kidnapped at one time by like-minded people of Sendero, the revolutionary movement named after him. Tupac Amaru.
The partisans kidnapped the then popular TV presenter and did not let go until the television broadcast the messages they needed. The testimony of a cameraman who was abducted with her after their release led the authorities to suspect that the incident was staged and proceeded with the full consent of Ms. Pelaez. Ms. Pelaez lost her status as a TV star and left for the US. Given these circumstances, the husband of a woman abducted by terrorists probably should not have published an article that leaves no doubt about his sympathy for the views of terrorists.
So, this is what I'm up to. First, I would venture to suggest that Juan Lazaro's reports to Moscow contained exactly the same content as his lectures at an American college. That is, their value was equal to zero, although they cost Moscow a hell of a lot of money. (In the same 2002, the Americans recorded on tape a scene in which Vicky Pelaez tells her husband that she brought from Peru "eight times" for "ten" and that, after deduction of expenses, they have "seventy-two and a half".)
By the way, the espionage activities of Juan Lazaro are well documented. The indictment cites, among other things, the audio recording of January 14, 2000, when Pelaez informs Lazaro that “everything went well” (referring to her receiving money from a Russian intelligence officer in Latin America), and to the video recording of August 25, 2007 year, when Lazaro in the same Latin America also meets with an agent.
On January 8, 2003, Lazaro informs Pelaez that he will transfer with her a text written in an "invisible" letter. On April 17, 2002, he tells his wife that “at the beginning of the war, we moved to Siberia,” and on May 6, 2003, Lazaro reports that he “receives a radiogram” “from there.” So the assertion of the Kommersant source that “even having arrested him, the American intelligence services were powerless to prove the connection of the detainee with Russian intelligence” is bewildering. Don Juan's behavior in the cell strongly resembles that of Don Quixote. I don’t know about broken ribs, but think about it: American intelligence agencies have been documenting every step of a “valuable illegal” for ten years. Why did they beat him, for fun, or what?
Secondly, the most important question. Tell me, what great information about American politics could a “valuable illegal immigrant” give if he publicly proclaimed himself an admirer of terrorists and a harsh critic of the accursed American military? Can you imagine what Richard Sorge would have learned if he had lectured publicly in Japanese colleges about the wise leader Stalin?
Some time after the arrest of ten clowns, it became clear that our special services were trying to put a good face on a bad game. Putin sang with ten clowns "where the Motherland begins", Medvedev awarded them the Order "For Courage". And now, a leak campaign is clearly beginning, which is supposed to prove that only the vile traitor Shcherbakov helped the Americans expose the "valuable agent", whose every step was carefully documented for ten years (that is, it was Shcherbakov who betrayed him ten years ago ?!) and who publicly praised Chavez, but privately complained that the center considered his information useless. I think that the article in Kommersant is only the first sign. We will hear a lot more from "terribly secret sources" about the exploits of our new Sorge and Mata Hari.
YULIA LATYNINA
daily log
From which it follows that ten spies caught in the summer in the United States were handed over by the defector Colonel Shcherbakov, who was in charge of working with American illegal immigrants in the SVR and fled to the United States three days before the exposure.
The authors of the material claim that their investigation was like a real "intelligence work." The informants flatly refused to speak on the phone and "changed their email addresses more than once." However, the very nature of the information leaked by these informants suggests that the article was the result of a special operation by the special services, which testifies, firstly, to a disassembly inside the office, and secondly, to the intention to turn a dozen clowns into heroes.
The main object of glorification in the article was 65-year-old Mikhail Vasenkov, aka Juan Lazaro, "the most valuable and experienced of ten Russian illegal immigrants," according to Kommersant's sources.
Sources (the same ones who were afraid to talk on the phone) reported in a terrible secret that “under the guise of a fashion photographer, Juan Lazaro traveled all over Latin America, along the way acquiring acquaintances among politicians and businessmen”, that his wife Vicky Pelaez was an “influential journalist”, and Vasenkov's acquaintances included "high-ranking functionaries from the left wing of the US Democratic Party." ..
“The biography of Vasenkov-Lazaro was so impeccable that, even having arrested him, the American intelligence services were powerless to prove the connection of the detainee with Russian intelligence. Before the investigators sat a gray-haired respected family man, whose children, wife, numerous neighbors ... were ready to confirm under oath any fact from the life of a respectable 65-year-old American Lazaro, ”Kommersant writes. And so it would have continued if the bloody traitor, Colonel Shcherbakov, had not appeared in the cell to the new Sorge.
“The one who came in Russian told the arrested person his name and surname, rank, place of work, after which he said: “Mikhail Anatolyevich, you need to confess and surrender.” But even here Vasenkov answered in Spanish that he did not understand what language this man spoke! And only when the traitor handed over to the Americans a folder with Vasenkov's personal file, he "named his real name, adding that he did not intend to say anything else." The Americans broke three of his ribs and a leg, but he still remained silent. Nails would be made of these people!
With such an abundance of heroic details, you somehow lose sight of the main thing: what, in fact, did the “valuable illegal immigrant” scout for?
From his own point of view, no shit.
The American accusation in the summer contained the following quote from a conversation between Juan Lazaro and Vicki Pelaez, recorded back in 2002. Lazaro: "They say my information isn't worth a damn because I don't give sources." Pelaez: "And you put the name of any politician."
Then Lazaro continues to complain about his bosses: “I will write to them what they want. But I will continue to report what I report. If they don't like what I tell them, so much the worse for them... They say their hands are tied. They don't care about the country."
What exactly was reported by "the most valuable of illegal immigrants" such that even the Moscow center did not take him seriously?
It's hard to say for sure, but I'll venture one guess. It is connected with the biography of the “valuable illegal immigrant”, which peaked in 2008, when the “impeccable family man” as a temporary professor lectured at Baruch College for a whole semester.
There he acted no worse than the commissioner of the Nashi movement. To the astonished students, the “valuable illegal” informed that the war in Iraq and Afghanistan was staged by the bloody American imperialists under pressure from the military lobby; praised the great man Hugo Chavez and noted that Colombian President Alvaro Uribe is a hostage of paramilitary groups that monopolize the drug trade (US ally Alvaro Uribe, if anyone does not know, made huge and very effective efforts to destroy the power of the drug mafia in Colombia).
Since Baruch College is not Seliger, the “valuable illegal immigrant” was driven away for the next semester.
The super spy did not hide his radical views and in 1990 even managed to publish an article glorifying Sendero Luminoso (“Shining Path” is a Peruvian left-wing extremist organization that widely used terrorist forms of activity). It was, to put it mildly, imprudent, if only because the wife of a valuable illegal immigrant, the Peruvian journalist Vicky Pelaez, was allegedly kidnapped at one time by like-minded people of Sendero, the revolutionary movement named after him. Tupac Amaru.
The partisans kidnapped the then popular TV presenter and did not let go until the television broadcast the messages they needed. The testimony of a cameraman who was abducted with her after their release led the authorities to suspect that the incident was staged and proceeded with the full consent of Ms. Pelaez. Ms. Pelaez lost her status as a TV star and left for the US. Given these circumstances, the husband of a woman abducted by terrorists probably should not have published an article that leaves no doubt about his sympathy for the views of terrorists.
So, this is what I'm up to. First, I would venture to suggest that Juan Lazaro's reports to Moscow contained exactly the same content as his lectures at an American college. That is, their value was equal to zero, although they cost Moscow a hell of a lot of money. (In the same 2002, the Americans recorded on tape a scene in which Vicky Pelaez tells her husband that she brought from Peru "eight times" for "ten" and that, after deduction of expenses, they have "seventy-two and a half".)
By the way, the espionage activities of Juan Lazaro are well documented. The indictment cites, among other things, the audio recording of January 14, 2000, when Pelaez informs Lazaro that “everything went well” (referring to her receiving money from a Russian intelligence officer in Latin America), and to the video recording of August 25, 2007 year, when Lazaro in the same Latin America also meets with an agent.
On January 8, 2003, Lazaro informs Pelaez that he will transfer with her a text written in an "invisible" letter. On April 17, 2002, he tells his wife that “at the beginning of the war, we moved to Siberia,” and on May 6, 2003, Lazaro reports that he “receives a radiogram” “from there.” So the assertion of the Kommersant source that “even having arrested him, the American intelligence services were powerless to prove the connection of the detainee with Russian intelligence” is bewildering. Don Juan's behavior in the cell strongly resembles that of Don Quixote. I don’t know about broken ribs, but think about it: American intelligence agencies have been documenting every step of a “valuable illegal” for ten years. Why did they beat him, for pleasure, or what? ..
Secondly, the most important question. Tell me, what great information about American politics could a “valuable illegal immigrant” give if he publicly proclaimed himself an admirer of terrorists and a harsh critic of the accursed American military? Can you imagine what Richard Sorge would have learned if he had lectured publicly in Japanese colleges about the wise leader Stalin?
Some time after the arrest of ten clowns, it became clear that our special services were trying to put a good face on a bad game. Putin sang with ten clowns "where the Motherland begins", Medvedev awarded them the Order "For Courage". And now, a leak campaign is clearly beginning, which is supposed to prove that only the vile traitor Shcherbakov helped the Americans expose the “valuable agent”, whose every step was carefully documented for ten years (that is, it turns out that Shcherbakov betrayed him ten years ago ?!) and who publicly praised Chavez, but privately complained that the center considered his information useless. I think that the article in Kommersant is only the first sign. We will hear a lot more from "terribly secret sources" about the exploits of our new Sorge and Mata Hari.
It is difficult for Russian intelligence to remember the name of an illegal general who became a Hero of the Soviet Union for many years of work abroad. But one name does come to mind.
Mikhail Anatolyevich Vasenkov performed Soviet/Russian foreign intelligence assignments abroad under the name of Juan José Lázaro Fuentes. According to some information, he began to study Spanish at the Patrice Lumumba Peoples' Friendship University (there was such a political figure in the Congo (Zaire). In the 1960s, Misha Vasenkov, then still a very young man (born in 1945), was sent to Spain, and from there he went to Peru, where, under the guise of a photographer, he began his work for the foreign intelligence of the Soviet Union.
According to the Kommersant newspaper, Vasenkov arrived from Spain in Peru with a Uruguayan passport on March 13, 1976. He had a letter with him on the letterhead of a Spanish tobacco company stating that he had been sent on a business trip to study the Peruvian market, and according to other sources, he allegedly came to the country to learn the local language (Quechua). In 1979 he received Peruvian citizenship.
In 1983, Vasenkov married Peruvian journalist Virginia Pelaez Ocampo, and in 1985, after that, the family with his wife's son from his first marriage moved to New York. It was an authorized move on the instructions of the leadership of the Soviet foreign intelligence.
In the US, the Lazaro family lived modestly, despite the fact that the Russian intelligence officer's wife was an influential journalist for the Spanish-language newspaper El Diario, and among the intelligence officer's acquaintances were high-ranking functionaries from the left wing of the Democratic Party. In 1987, their common son was born in New York.
During his stay abroad, Vasenkov received three higher educations, including graduating from New York University. Already in the United States, at the age of 60, he achieved a degree in political science. During his work, Vasenkov was so instilled that he forgot the Russian language.
Lazaro actually did get his Ph.D. in political science from the New School of Social Research, now known simply as The New School. In 2008, he briefly taught a course in Latin American politics at Baruch College in Manhattan.
For successful work for the Soviet special services, Vasenkov was awarded the title of Hero of the Soviet Union back in the 80s by a secret decree of the USSR leadership. Shortly before his arrest, Vasenkov was awarded the rank of Major General of the SVR.
The interlocutor of the Kommersant newspaper describes the circumstances of this meeting as follows: “The one who came in Russian told the arrested person his name and surname, rank, place of work, after which he said: “Mikhail Anatolyevich, you need to confess and surrender.” In response, the arrested man told the guest in English that he did not understand the language he spoke. Then the visitor repeated everything already in English. But in response I heard: “I am Juan Lazaro. Everything that is happening is a stupid mistake, and I don’t understand what I should confess.” After that, Colonel Poteev (the head of the American Department of Directorate "C", in charge of the work of illegal immigrants. - Auth.) Handed over to the Americans the personal file of Vasenkov-Lazaro, which he had brought from Moscow. After the folder with detailed information was placed in front of the suspect, he gave his real name, adding that he did not intend to say anything more ... "
