US and UK. Igor Sutyagin, Alexander Zaporozhsky, Sergei Skripal and Gennadiy Vasilenko were included in the exchange. All four served a considerable time in Russian prisons; at least three of the jailed individuals in Russia were convicted of spying for either the United Kingdom or the U.S. White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel reportedly said on July 8 that President Barack Obama approved the swap deal. An administration official was quoted as saying that Obama had not spoken to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev about the spy swap but was "fully briefed and engaged in the matter". Broad agreement in the US was reported to exist that the agents were being deported swiftly as neither government wanted the case to damage attempts to reset their relationship. Shortly before the swap deal was reached, nuclear specialist Igor Sutyagin, one of the Russian prisoners included in the deal, was moved to a Moscow prison from a facility near the Arctic Circle and then flown to Vienna as part of the exchange. Under a U.S.–Russian agreement, the Russian government agreed to release the Russian prisoners and their family members for resettlement. The Russian prisoners had served a number of years in prison and some were in poor health. On July 9, all ten suspects were deported. A government-chartered jet from Vision Airlines left New York's LaGuardia Airport and flew to Vienna International Airport via Bangor, Maine for refueling and then for the swap around midday of July 9 (local time). Returning from Vienna were the four Russian prisoners – Sutyagin, Zaporozhsky, Skripal, and Vasilenko. The aircraft landed at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire, England, to drop two of the exchanged Russian nationals and proceeded to Washington Dulles International Airport on the afternoon of July 9. The Russian government Yakovlev Yak-42 jet returned to Moscow's Domodedovo airport where, after landing, the ten spies were kept away from local and international press. Later that day the Russian ministry of Foreign Affairs confirmed the exchange of four convicted people for ten Russian citizens citing "humanitarian considerations and constructive partnership development". Prisoners held by Russia involved in the exchange Igor Sutyagin Igor Sutyagin was an arms control researcher with the Institute for US and Canadian Studies (ISKAN) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. He was arrested in 1999, and sentenced in April 2004 to 15 years' hard labor on high treason charges. He collected open-source data on