A British Embassy spy has apologised for selling state secrets to the Russia, and said he only wanted to give his employer ‘a bit of a slap’.
Despite initially appearing ‘keen and polite’ upon starting work at the embassy in 2016, ex-RAF officer Smith’s behaviour quickly began to change when his wife left to return to her home country of Ukraine in late 2018.
‘Now I have had a year-and-a-half to look back on it, I am disgusted with myself and ashamed at what I have done.’Smith replied: ‘At no time. I just wanted to give the embassy a bit of a slap because I did not think that they were treating me very well.’ Prosecutor Alison Morgan KC told the court Smith was vocal in expressing his views about the war in Ukraine, collected German uniforms from World War Two, and had a cartoon of Vladimir Putin holding Angela Merkel’s severed head in his work locker.Morgan said over a period of years, Smith collected ‘a range of highly sensitive information from and about the embassy with the intention of supplying it to the Russian Federation’.
Smith was snared in an undercover operation involving the deployment of two fake Russian operatives after he sent a letter in November 2020 to member of military staff at the Russian Embassy in Berlin.
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