MOSCOW | 
 
 MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian spy Anna Chapman posed in the Russian version of Maxim magazine in the most provocative photographs yet to appear of the secret agent who was deported from the United States in July. 
 
 A photograph on www.maximonline.ru shows red-haired Chapman dressed in nylon and lace and posing with a handgun. 
 
 "Anna Chapman has done more to excite Russian patriotism than the Russian soccer team," wrote Maxim. 
 
 Nine other spies were deported from the United States with her. 
 
 The Kremlin has seized on the Cold War aspects of the case to try to boost the prestige of its intelligence services and avert what has widely been seen as a major disgrace for Russia's Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), a successor to the KGB. 
 
 Although celebrated by the Kremlin and Russian media, the Russian spy ring was reported to have failed to secure any major intelligence before their arrests in the United States. 
 
 Russian President Dmitry Medvedev awarded the group of spies the country's highest state honors on Monday. 
 
 The photographs and an interview with Chapman will be in the next issue of Maxim, which has included Chapman in its list of Russia's 100 sexiest women. 
 
 The 10 Russians, accused of being sleeper agents, were swapped with four imprisoned Russians who were accused of having traded secrets with the West. 
 
 (Writing by Thomas Grove, Editing by Steve Addison) ||||| Image Credit: FBI/ABC 
 
 ABC News’ Jason Ryan, Pierre Thomas and Jack Cloherty report: 
 
 The FBI video is remarkable: Russian spies digging up payoff money in New Jersey, handing off a bag in a New York train station and passing information in furtive meetings and “brush bys.” 
 
 It’s all part of the surveillance video released today of a decade-long FBI undercover operation that brought down Anna Chapman and the Russian spy ring operating in the United States. 
 
 The videos were released as part of a Freedom of Information Act request by ABC News and other news outlets . 
 
 In conjunction with the release of the videos, the FBI has also released more than 1,000 pages of highly redacted documents from the case that was dubbed Operation Ghost Stories because it was reminiscent of the Cold War’s cloak-and-dagger spy games. 
 
 The FBI tracked the spy ring known as the “Illegals” program across the United States with FBI agents and the Justice Department arresting the 10 spies June 27, 2010. 
 
 The case captured international attention with Russian bombshell Chapman providing an undercurrent of sex appeal and international intrigue in one of the biggest spy cases since the collapse of the Soviet Union. 
 
 Chapman covertly communicated with Russian government officials from the Russian Mission to the United Nations by using private wireless networks sent from her laptop computer. 
 
 One of the videos shows Chapman days before she was arrested interacting with an undercover FBI agent who approached her when she was having computer problems. The FBI agent was posing as a Russian consulate employee. 
 
 Read Chapman and the FBI agent’s conversation. 
 
 Captured from multiple angles in another video, Chapman appears in the FBI surveillance videos being monitored in an unnamed department store in New York City. 
 
 Also released is a video of Russian spy Mikhail Semenko dropping off $5,000 in cash at a park in Arlington, Va. According to court papers in the case prior to the June 26, 2010 video, an undercover FBI agent posing as a Russian agent had handed Semenko the cash during a meeting in downtown Washington, D.C. 
 
 Watch Semenko fill a “dead drop.” 
 
 Besides Chapman and Semenko, the case involved four couples living in the United States under assumed false identities while secretly working as covert Russian spies on long-term, “deep-cover” assignments to try to infiltrate U.S .policy-making circles. 
 
 The Russian spies used the fake name of Richard and Cynthia Murphy and lived in Montclair, N.J., Donald Howard Heathfield and Tracey Lee Ann Foley lived in Boston, Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills lived together in Arlington, Va., and Seattle, and Juan Lazaro and Vicky Pelaez lived in Yonkers, N.Y. 
 
 The couples even had children together to add to their cover stories. 
 
 Also, Christopher Metsos – the Russian handler and alleged paymaster at the center of the spy ring who facilitated meetings and cash for the 10 Russian spies - posed as a Canadian citizen and regularly traveled to U.S. locations to meet with the spies, including numerous meetings in New York City in places such as coffee shops and book stores. 
 
 The videos show a brush pass between Metsos and an unidentified Russian government official at the Forest Hills, Queens, train station on the Long Island Rail Road May 16, 2004. Metsos received an orange bag stuffed with cash from the man who the FBI alleged worked at the United Nations Russia Mission. 
 
 Watch a “brush pass.” 
 
 Metsos drove to Wurtsboro, N.Y., the next day and buried the cash wrapped in duct tape in the ground. The FBI dug up the cash weeks later and photographed the evidence and reburied the package. 
 
 Another of the videos released shows the same location more than two years later and Russian spies Michael Zottoli and Patricia Mills digging up the money left by Metsos. 
 
 Metsos remains a fugitive and is believed to be in Russia. After the spies were arrested in the United States, Metsos was detained in Cyprus but mysteriously disappeared and failed to show up at a bail hearing a day later. 
 
 The agents operated at the direction of the Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, the SVR, the successor agency to Soviet Union’s KGB. 
 
 In a 2009 encrypted message deciphered by the FBI, the SVR provided two of the spies, Richard and Cynthia Murphy, with a communication that noted, “You were sent to USA for long-term service trip. Your education, bank accounts, car, house etc – all these serve one goal: fulfill your main mission, i.e. to search and develop ties in policymaking circles in US and send intels [intelligence reports] to C (enter),” 
 
 After the agents were arrested, the spy saga lasted almost two weeks in late June and July 2010 with the United States and Russia exchanging spies on the tarmac of an airport in Vienna, Austria on July 9. The spy swap occurred after the 10 spies admitted in New York federal court that they were Russian agents. 
 
 They were sentenced to 11 days of time served and expelled from the United States under the terms of the spy swap, which released four people who had been convicted of spying for the West. 
 
 Another suspected agent, Alexey Karetnikov, was deported from the United States in July 2010. He was arrested June 28, 2010, when the story broke but was only charged with immigration violations after the FBI could not find solid evidence that he was connected to the spy ring. Karetnikov had been working at Microsoft in Seattle before he was arrested. 
 
 Since the spy saga ended, Chapman has become a celebrity in Russia, posing in Maxim magazine and Russia’s Playboy. She has also taken a role in Vladimir Putin’s United Russia political party. 
 
 Earlier this year Alexander Poteyev, a former senior Russian intelligence officer, was tried in absentia in Moscow for allegedly exposing the spy ring. Poteyev left Moscow as the arrests were unfolding and is believed to be living in the West. 
 
 Although it operated with Cold War stealth and tactics, the spy network never obtained any classified information, FBI officials say. ||||| In the final chapter of a saga worthy of a spy novel, the U.S. and Russia agreed to one of the biggest prisoner swaps between the countries since the Cold War. 
 
 The deal—to exchange 10 Russian spies who were arrested in the U.S. June 27 for four prisoners being held in Russia—came after high-level negotiations led by Central Intelligence Agency Director Leon Panetta and his counterpart in Moscow, according to people familiar with the matter. 
 
 In New York on Thursday, the 10 Russian agents pleaded guilty in federal court to conspiring to serve as unlawful foreign agents. They all revealed their true Russian identities—seven had been living in the U.S. under false names—and agreed to be expelled from the U.S. in exchange for time already served in jail. 
 
 Prosecutors alleged the Russian agents used secretive methods straight out of a James Bond movie: carrying letters in invisible ink, burying money and posting hidden images on websites for their Russian superiors to read at headquarters. All 10 were set to fly to Moscow on Thursday night. An eleventh accused spy remains at large after skipping bail in Cyprus last week. 
 
 All 10 members of a Russian spy ring pleaded guilty to criminal charges in a deal that will likely lead to their immediate deportation. Evan Perez and Bob O'Brien discuss. Also, Mark Schoofs discusses the discovery of three powerful antibodies in a significant step in the drive to create an AIDS vaccine. 
 
 Earlier in the day in Russia, the Kremlin began the process of releasing four prisoners requested by the U.S. They include Igor Sutyagin, a Russian physicist serving a 15-year prison term for spying for the U.S.; Sergei Skripal, a military-intelligence officer convicted of spying for the U.K.; Alexander Zaporozhsky, a former colonel in the Foreign Intelligence Service; and Gennady Vasilenko, a former KGB agent. 
 
 The four, convicted of having contact with Western intelligence agencies, will be resettled outside Russia with their families. President Dmitry Medvedev signed a decree Thursday pardoning the four prisoners. 
 
 Even before the arrests, U.S. officials had a wish list of prisoners they wanted Russia to release. Just hours after the Russians were arrested, the U.S. began negotiating for a swap. Russian officials immediately agreed to negotiate and turn over the names on the U.S. list. 
 
 "These agents never penetrated our government, we essentially had their playbook, and their exposure—by definition—wiped out the possibility that they could ever be used for espionage here," a U.S. official said. "That's how the idea of a swap came about." 
 
 The diplomatic deal was launched with matters of state in mind: both sides were eager to limit damage to improving relations between the two countries. Presidents Barack Obama and Medvedev shared hamburgers and soft drinks in a Washington suburb days before the arrests, extolling their two countries' "reset" relationship just blocks from where one of the spies lived. 
 
 Doing Business As... Ten members of an alleged Russian spy ring in the U.S. gave their true names in court on Thursday as they prepared to enter guilty pleas to criminal charges as part of a plea deal with the U.S. government. Real Name Pseudonym Vladimir Guryev "Richard Murphy" Lydia Guryev "Cynthia Murphy" Andrey Bezrukov "Donald Howard Heathfield" Elena Vavilova "Tracey Lee Ann Foley" Mikhail Kutsik "Michael Zottoli" Natalia Pereverzeva "Patricia Mills" Mikhail Anatonoljevich Vasenkov "Juan Lazaro" Vicky Pelaez same Anna Chapman same Mikhail Semenko same 
 
 The exchange allows Russia a quick end to the embarrassment over the busted spy operation and reduces the time U.S. investigators may have to try to extract information from those arrested. The U.S. avoids a trial that could have exposed its own counterespionage methods. 
 
 In total, the U.S. Attorney for New York's southern district charged 11 people in the spy ring. Some were also facing money laundering charges, but none was facing the more serious charge of espionage. 
 
 U.S. national security officials don't believe the Russian agents passed on any classified or sensitive information to Moscow, and now believe they effectively shut down the U.S. part of the program, known as "the illegals," a reference to the fact the agents operated without diplomatic protection. A senior U.S. law enforcement official said investigators are pleased at the resolution: "We feel pretty comfortable about the chilling effect this will have," he said. 
 
 The end to a case will not, however, result in a big pay day for the spies: Their plea agreement calls for them to surrender any rights to or proceeds from their story of suburban espionage. They must also surrender their homes, cars and their bank accounts in the U.S. 
 
 The U.S. and Soviet Union repeatedly swapped spies, as well as imprisoned Soviet dissidents, during the Cold War. Unlike talks decades ago, which often occurred on neutral ground such as Geneva, Russian and U.S. officials did most of the negotiating in Washington and Moscow. And unlike past handoffs between the Soviet Union and Western countries, which sometimes occurred at Berlin's infamous Checkpoint Charlie, the 10 agents were set to board planes for flights home. 
 
 Federal prosecutors alleged most of the agents lived ordinary suburban lives, raising children, buying homes and befriending neighbors. 
 
 Russia's 11? View Graphics Read more about the spy suspects and allegations against them in the complaints. 
 
 News Hub: Russia Spy-Swap Deal Expected 2:15 Moscow and Washington are discussing a deal to swap the 10 suspected deep-cover Russian agents arrested last month in the U.S. for prisoners held in Russia, people familiar with the talks say. John Bussey and Michael Rothfeld discuss. 
 
 Mikhail Vasenkov, 66 years old, who used the false name of "Juan Lazaro," and his wife Vicky Pelaez, a columnist for Spanish language newspaper El Diario-La Prensa, lived in suburban Yonkers, N.Y., while Mikhail Kutsik, 41 years old, who used the false name "Michael Zottoli," and Natalia Pereverzeva, 36 years old, who used the false name "Patricia Mills," lived as a couple in Arlington, Va. Both couples have children living in the U.S. 
 
 Vladimir Guryev, 44 years old, who had been living in Montclair, N.J. as "Richard Murphy," said in court Thursday that he had been in the U.S. since the mid-1990s, "under an assumed name, and I took direction from the Russian Federation." 
 
 Ms. Pelaez was using her real name and wasn't a trained agent, but she admitted that she traveled to Peru, accepting money from a Russian official and delivering messages. "I carried letters in invisible ink," Ms. Pelaez, 55 years old, told U.S. District Judge Kimba Wood, through a Spanish interpreter. 
 
 The accused agents used a variety of secretive methods to conceal their identities—some high tech, others less so, according to the government. They allegedly handed off money in a "brush pass," exchanging identical orange bags at a railroad station in Queens, burying money in the ground for someone else to dig up two years later, and posting hidden notes on websites for the "Center"—headquarters for the S.V.R., the Russian intelligence service—using a method called steganography. 
 
 Another member of the ring, 28-year-old Anna Chapman, ran an online real-estate business. While living in London before moving to the U.S. last year, she attended charity balls and worked at Barclays Bank PLC. This week, tabloid newspapers in London and the U.S. have run topless photographs of her that were reportedly sold by her ex-husband, who lives in the U.K. 
 
 Her ex-husband's behavior was "a disappointment and a betrayal" to Ms. Chapman, her lawyer, Robert Baum, said Thursday. He said Ms. Chapman plans to spend time with family in Russia and hopes to return to the U.K. eventually. 
 
 Prosecutors accused Ms. Chapman of communicating 10 times this year with Russian officials via a closed computer network as they sat near each other with laptops in public places in New York City. Late last month, an undercover FBI agent posing as a Russian official met with her and asked her to pass along a fake passport to someone else, but instead Ms. Chapman brought it to New York City police and was later arrested. 
 
 The case of Ms. Pelaez, the lone non-Russian citizen, posed the greatest complication to the agreement, according to people familiar with the matter. Ms. Pelaez is a Peruvian national and U.S. citizen but had to renounce her citizenship under the deal, her lawyer said. She initially objected to being expelled to Russia. 
 
 Her attorney, John M. Rodriguez, said in court Thursday that she and her two children would be provided with free housing in Russia, a $2,000 a month stipend, and that she would be allowed to travel outside Russia. She would like to go back to Peru, Mr. Rodriguez said. 
 
 U.S. authorities are working with relatives of the other spies to arrange for their minor children to accompany them to Russia. 
 
 On Thursday, even as details of the swap were being finalized, family members of the Russian prisoners said they were in the dark about fast-moving developments. 
 
 Mr. Sutyagin's family said he was told he could choose one family member to bring with him to the West. Neither his wife nor his two daughters have passports, however, so he didn't choose any, his family said. 
 
 Write to Evan Perez at evan.perez@wsj.com, Chad Bray at chad.bray@dowjones.com and Gregory L. White at greg.white@wsj.com
– This generation's wanna-be Mata Hari appears in all her blazing hotness in Russian Maxim in what officials hope might be a morale-booster for their spooks. "Anna Chapman has done more to excite Russian patriotism than the Russian soccer team," the mag sniggers about the nearly-total-boob-baring shot of the pistol-packing spy deported from New York. The bodacious former spy has fast become the poster babe of the seductive spy operation the Russians wish they had, Reuters notes. Though loudly hailed by the Kremlin and Russian press, the years-long spy operation in the US including Chapman and nine compatriots is widely considered an embarrassing flop.