Moscow trial starts for ex-KGB man who helped Philby

Oleg Kalugin, an outspoken former KGB general who handled the British spy Kim Philby, went on trial for high treason in absentia yesterday.

Mr Kalugin, who ran the KGB's counter-intelligence operations in America in the 1970s, is now in exile there. The media-friendly Mr Kalugin served briefly as a pro- reform deputy after the Soviet Union collapsed.

He is the second exiled former secret service operative to be put on trial in Moscow, less than two months before trials in absentia are made illegal. The corruption trial of Alexander Litvinenko, an anti-terrorist officer who fled to London in 2000, started in May. Officials are refusing to discuss the two cases, on the ground that they are classified.

Both men, who have refused to return to Russia for their trials, believe the successor organisation of the KGB, the FSB, is bent on revenge. They have written books critical of the KGB and FSB and have accused the FSB of planting the apartment bombs in Russia that led to the second Chechen war and propelled Vladimir Putin into the Kremlin.

Mr Kalugin is accused of giving sensitive information to American officials so he could stay in the US, where he has lived since the mid-1990s. According to the Russian news agency Itar-Tass, details in a book by Mr Kalugin helped US security officials track down his sources in the country.

The charges against Mr Kalugin are said to stem from his testimony at the trial of the retired US army reserve colonel George Trofimoff, who was convicted of spying for the Soviet Union last year.

Mr Kalugin was the KGB's deputy chief of station in Washington where he ran John Walker, who sold US Navy secrets for 18 years.

Since going into exile in America, he has worked as a consultant and given spy tours of Washington with a former adversary from the FBI, David Major.