In an interview with RFE/RL, Oleg Kalugin, former head of overseas KGB operations, scoffs at the recent spy scandal:

Honestly, it made me laugh. It all seemed so laughable — an intelligence farce. Financing 10 or 12 people who had no direct access to state secrets and hoping they would one day be able to infiltrate the State Department or another governmental institution is such a waste of time, money, and human resources. That’s my opinion on the ‘spy’ saga that unfolded recently.

In my opinion, it ended very successfully with the swap of the so-called Russian spies with a relatively small group of real American spies, of people who at any rate provided valuable information to the United States and Britain. The exchange was a failure in the sense that Russia freed people who really were spies — this was not an invention.