Report: Anna Chapman's father may have had Kremlin connections

London, July 11 (ANI): Russian spy Anna Chapman's father, Vasily Kushchenko, worked in Nairobi as a diplomat at the same time as Sergei Ivanov, Russia's first Deputy Prime Minister, a career spy and a friend of the country's Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, according to a report.

According to The Telegraph, Ivanov was a career spy for 18 years, first in the KGB and then in Russia's SVR foreign intelligence service and was allegedly expelled from the UK for spying activities.

The claim also suggests that her family may also enjoy serious political connections inside the Kremlin.

If confirmed, it will strengthen suspicions voiced by Alex Chapman, Anna's ex-husband, that she was groomed to be an intelligence agent by her father, who currently works for the Russian Foreign Ministry.

Anna Chapman was married to Alex Chapman, a 30-year-old trainee British psychiatrist in Bournemouth, in 2002, and later divoced in 2006.

The claim came as the ten self-confessed Russian agents spent their first full day back in Russia at an undisclosed Moscow location, after being deported from the US.

The paper stated that intelligence sources have said that they are probably being thoroughly debriefed by the SVR intelligence service, the agency that ran them. (ANI)