Just like old times

The BBC has the story:

The US and Russia have taken part in the biggest spy swap since the Cold War in an exchange at the Vienna airport. One plane brought ten Russian agents deported from the US after a court hearing at which they admitted being agents for a foreign country. The other was said to have brought four people convicted of spying in Russia, given a presidential pardon after they admitted their guilt. Both planes took off again after about ninety minutes.
The Russian Yakovlev Yak-42 plane, said to be carrying the four people pardoned by Moscow, landed at Vienna airport at about the same time as the Vision Airlines Boeing 767-200 from New York carrying the Russian agents.
Television pictures showed the two aircraft parked side-by-side on the runway. Covered aircraft stairs were brought up to both planes. The BBC's Bethany Bell in Vienna says a swap on the runway would mean that no one had 'officially' entered the country.
A senior Russian official was quoted by Agence France-Presse as saying the Russian agents were expected to arrive back in their homeland on Friday. The lawyer for nuclear specialist Igor Sutyagin, one of those released by Russia, confirmed that his client had left Moscow. The ten Russian agents earlier pleaded guilty in New York to "conspiracy to act as an unregistered agent of a foreign country". More serious money laundering charges against them were dropped.

Previous spy swaps include:
1962: KGB Colonel Rudolf Abel was freed by the US in exchange for Gary Powers, pilot of a U-2 spy plane shot down over the USSR in 1960.
1969: The UK swaps Soviet agents Peter and Helen Kroger for Gerald Brooke, jailed for spying in the USSR.
1981: Guenter Guillaume, agent for East Germany's Stasi, is exchanged for Western agents
1985: US agents held in Eastern Europe are handed over in return for a top Polish agent, Marian Zacharski, and three others held in the West.
1986: Soviet dissident Anatoly Sharansky and three Western agents are swapped for KGB husband-and-wife spies Karl and Hana Koecher and two other agents.>

The New York court appearance was the first time they had all appeared in public together since being arrested last month. Prosecutors said the accused had posed as ordinary citizens, some living together as couples for years, and were ordered by Russia's External Intelligence Service (SVR) to infiltrate policy-making circles and collect information.
BBC Washington correspondent Kevin Connolly says there is broad agreement in the US that the agents are being deported swiftly because neither government wants this to damage attempts to reset their often prickly relationship.
Court documents revealed the real names of five of the Russians involved:
•"Richard Murphy" and "Cynthia Murphy" admitted they were Russian citizens named Vladimir Guryev and Lydia Guryev.
•"Donald Howard Heathfield" and "Tracey Lee Ann Foley" admitted they were Russian citizens named Andrey Bezrukov and Elena Vavilova.
•"Juan Lazaro" admitted that he was a Russian citizen named Mikhail Vasenkov.
"Michael Zottoli" and "Patricia Mills" had admitted earlier they were Russian citizens named Mikhail Kutsik and Natalia Pereverzeva. Anna Chapman and Mikhail Semenko had apparently operated in the US under their own names, while Vicky Pelaez was born in Peru.
An eleventh suspect, known as "Christopher Metsos", went missing after being released on bail in Cyprus, where he had been arrested.
The Kremlin named the four released in Russia:
•Igor Sutyagin, a nuclear scientist jailed in 2004 for spying for the CIA.
•Sergei Skripal, a Russian military intelligence officer convicted of spying for the UK in 2006.
•Alexander Zaporozhsky, a former employee of Russia's foreign intelligence service jailed for espionage in 2003.
•Gennad,iy Vasilenko, reportedly a former KGB agent.
The State Department said after the hearing that there would be "no significant national security benefit" in sentencing the ten to lengthy jail terms. "The network of unlawful agents operating inside the United States has been dismantled," spokesman Mark Toner said. "The United States took advantage of the opportunity presented to secure the release of four individuals serving lengthy prison terms in Russia, several of whom were in poor health."
The lawyer for Anna Chapman played down the importance of the Russian group's espionage in the US. Robert Baum told the Associated Press: "None of the people involved, from my understanding, provided any information that couldn't have been obtained on the internet."
John Rodriguez, a lawyer for Vicky Pelaez, said a Russian official had told his client she would receive $2,000 a month for life and free housing in Moscow, but added she would be allowed to leave Russia if she wanted to. Mr. Rodriguez indicated Ms. Pelaez would return to Peru.
The Russian foreign ministry issued a statement saying that the exchange by Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service and the Central Intelligence Agency was being conducted in the context of "overall improvement of the US-Russian ties and giving them new dynamics".

Rico says funny, but it sounds like the 'old dynamics' to him... (And explains why, after all these years, the FBI finally reeled in the ten hapless Russian agents for the swap.)