up to him to evaluate but up to specialists and the "ultimate consumers of the information of such type, the Supreme Commander – the president of the Russian Federation." The defector and former GRU agent, Viktor Suvorov, was scornful of both the agents and the agencies that sent them. In mid-August 2010, Sir Stephen Lander, former Director-General of MI5 (1996–2002), voiced an opinion that the very existence of a ring of Russian "illegals" was no laughing matter: "The fact that they're nondescript or don't look serious is part of the charm of the business. That's why the Russians are so successful at some of this stuff. They're able to put people in those positions over time to build up their cover to be useful. They are part of a machine. ... And the machine is a very professional and serious one." In October 2010, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev recognized those "intelligence agents who worked in the United States and returned to Russia in July" together with other members of the Russian SVR for their service to the motherland in ceremonies held at the Kremlin. In November 2010, an unidentified Kremlin official told Kommersant that an assassination plan for the alleged defector "Colonel Shcherbakov" was already in the works: "We know who he is and where he is." The source added that "a Mercader" was sent after Shcherbakov—a reference to assassin Ramón Mercader who murdered Leon Trotsky in Mexico with an ice axe in 1940. The newspaper article's author later said that the statement could have been made in jest ("spy humour"). On November 13, 2010, U.S. intelligence analyst David Wise suggested that, assuming Shcherbakov was in the US, he must be under FBI protection. In November 2010, the Interfax news agency cited an unidentified "Russian intelligence source" as saying that "Colonel Alexander Poteyev, a former deputy head of the U.S. division of Directorate S (illegal intelligence) within the SVR" was the subject of both internal and criminal investigations, with the criminal case likely to have been opened as per Article 275 of the RF Criminal Code (high treason). Poteyev's identity (full name: Александр Николаевич Потеев, Aleksandr Nikolayevich Poteyev) was confirmed by other ex-KGB and ex-SVR sources. The revelations in the Russian media about the 'treachery' within the SVR were seen by commentators as a sign of an ongoing struggle within the RF top bureaucracy for control over the administratively autonomous