Confessions of spy

Russian spy who posed as a Canadian for more than 20 years

“A spy has to be an actor, but an actor that doesn’t need a public or a stage, and doesn’t require the approval of others,” says Elena Vavilova, as she sips a cappuccino in a Moscow cafe.

Vavilova acted the part of a Canadian woman named Tracy Foley, an identity stolen for her by the KGB, for two decades. Almost no one knew her real identity, not even her own children. She was an “illegal”, a deep-cover Russian operative sent to the west along with her husband Andrei Bezrukov, who used the name Donald Heathfield.

Vavilova and Bezrukov were arrested at their Boston home in 2010, part of a group of 10 Russian spies detained by the FBI, most of them illegals living in the US as ordinary Americans or Canadians. They were deported to Russia in a spy swap that included media favourite Anna Chapman and also involved four Russians accused of spying for the west travelling in the other direction, including Sergei Skripal, who was infamously poisoned in Salisbury last year...