Remembering Sutyagin: Good Man and Friend
By Robert Brannon
About five years ago, while working in Moscow as U.S. Naval attache, I met and befriended Igor Sutyagin. Over the course of time, we met often and enjoyed conversations about our respective interests. As an academic researcher, Igor was keenly interested in navies and how they relate to national security. And because we spent so much time together, we came to know each other pretty well. He was a frequent guest at my home and we often met for coffee or chai on Novy Arbat or someplace else near to where we both worked: I was at the U.S. Embassy, he was at the USA and Canada Institute.
Igor never had much money. Once when he was my guest for dinner (attended by several senior military officers and a few rising diplomats from both our countries), he didn't have the means to offer the customary hostess gift. Instead, when I escorted him to my apartment door, following the usual security checks, he presented my wife with a little package. We had been to Suzdal not long before and Igor knew we were fond of visual images that try to catch Russia at its best. When we opened the package after the guests had left that night, we found a small collection -- maybe four or five -- of simple photographs of Suzdal's landscape, churches and icons, some set against a sunset made the more spectacular by ice and snow. I've since had those snapshots framed and they hang in a place of honor in my home. Every time I walk by that little collection of photographs I think of Igor.
He had a shy, quirky little smile -- anyone who knows him remembers that. And he was smart, really smart. But he never stole anything and he was no traitor. I remember asking him once what he thought about some of the people who were causing Russia so much trouble, environmentalists who were drawing attention to some of the most horrific aspects of the Soviet legacy in Russia: Igor had no sympathy for them. He was a pragmatic man who valued patriotism and was very proud to be Russian.
He laughed at my awkwardness in adapting to Russian life, offered me good advice and always tried to help. An archetypical academic, he was uninterested in money. I usually picked up the tab when we went out, but that was just because I had more money than he did. He was always sheepish about that, but pragmatic nonetheless. We struck up a pretty good friendship over the years and we would often call each other during a routine working day. There are many Russian holidays, a lot of them military in nature, and Igor loved to call me and wish me happy "Navigator's Day," for example, because he knew I was a Naval flight officer.
Occasionally, when one of us was puzzled by something relating to current events between our two nations, we met to talk about it. Sometimes one would ask the other for information about why Russia or the United States behaved as it did, especially about naval matters. Once, Igor asked me why the United States was still building high-tech submarines when the Cold War was over. I gave him the usual story about security and defense in an uncertain world and he seemed happy with that explanation. I also handed him a copy of All Hands magazine, a fairly ubiquitous U.S. Navy glossy publication that contains information on policy and personnel issues. That particular issue was focused on submarines and life at sea while serving on submarine duty -- pretty lightweight compared to the weighty statistics that usually occupied Igor. Still, he was intrigued that my country would be so willing to publish this kind of information openly and he was happy to have a copy to take back to his office.
When the Russian Navy decided to send a small ship into the Adriatic during the early stages of NATO's military intervention in Kosovo, I called Igor to ask his opinion. That phone call would later haunt us both because, unknown to us, we were being watched all the time. Audiotaped by surveillance, that conversation was later used against us during our respective "trials" (his was in a cage, mine was merely on television). I asked Igor to tell me what he thought about the small ship, an AGI. Igor told me what I pretty much knew already: That the ship was certainly capable of carrying small arms and perhaps even shoulder-fired missiles, but that it was unlikely any Russian ship might ever actually fire on a U.S. aircraft.
About three months after that episode, Igor was arrested for espionage.
It took them more than a year before they finally expelled me in a round of reciprocity in the wake of the Robert Hanssen case in the United States and the subsequent expulsion of a number of Russian "diplomats."
On March 27, 2001, the day Russia threw me out, RTR's evening news ran a five minute video "documentary" about the supposedly nefarious activities associated with my job as Naval attachÎ. Prominently featured in that newscast was Igor Sutyagin, videotaped in my presence, and accused of spying by exchanging information with "foreigners" that was damaging to Russia's national security. I will never forget the narrator saying that one of the most "guilty" aspects of the case against Igor was the stack of foreign newspapers and magazines piled in his little office at the USA and Canada Institute.
The phone call about the ship and its potential impact on the crisis in Kosovo had been taped and "doctored" to appear to incriminate us both. There was my question to Igor, asking if he had "received the envelope I sent to him." Gone was the next line, in which Igor thanked me for the dinner invitation that was inside the envelope.
The simple difference between us was that I had immunity and he did not. All I got was a hard time, some relatively benign harassment, and a trip to the airport. Igor got hard time literally, and has now been sentenced to 15 years in a Russian prison. His only crime was that he had a passion for navies and he liked to talk to foreigners. I was one of the foreigners whom he liked to talk to and for that I am eternally grateful, if sad for his fate. I will always remember walking through Moscow with him and talking about things we were interested in -- innocent things like whether or not Russia's Navy might be better off following Britain's example of a slightly smaller but much more capable force. Those were great debates and I am richer for having known him.
I cherish those pictures of Suzdal that Igor took with his camera when he was still free to watch a sunset. He was a free spirit when he was free and his soul will outlive the souls of those who have imprisoned him. He is alive today but he is not free.
So please take just a brief moment to pause from your routine and think about Igor Sutyagin -- call upon whatever deity you wish and ask that he be given a little respite from his grief.
I knew Igor Sutyagin. He was and is a very good man. And he will always be my friend.
Robert Brannon, U.S. Naval attache in Moscow from 1998 to 2001, holds the chief of naval operations chair at the National Defense University's National War College. The views expressed are those of the author and in no way reflect those of the U.S. Navy, National Defense University or the National War College. A version of this comment first appeared on Johnson's Russia List.
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