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prostitute in the West, with the state paying for all of her beautiful underwear and all her expenses’.
    If it is hard to see what service Ms Chapman has rendered to Russia abroad, it is easy to see what she has done on her return. The failed spy has been a blank canvas on which the regime’s propagandists have painted their own image of Russia: unstoppable abroad, electrically exciting at home, youthful, daring and sexy. But the first priority was damage control. Aleksei Navalny, an opposition activist who has made his name with an online campaign against corruption in big business, notes that a bad image for Russia’s spies also damages Mr Putin, who has played heavily on his own background in the KGB. Mr Putin’s former senior speech-writer Simon Kordonsky, now a professor at the liberal Higher School of Economics, sees the regime’s eagerness to get its spies out of American custody as a manifestation of ‘corporate solidarity’ among Chekists, who felt compelled to show that ‘one of their own cannot be taken’. But as her celebrity status grew, Ms Chapman’s allure, not failure, quickly became a dominant theme. Some seasoned KGB veterans seem genuinely awestruck by her nerveless approach. Viktor Cherkashin, a former counter-intelligence officer in Washington and West Germany who retired in 1991 , says she has the right mix of qualities for the modern age.
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    A person who can behave so naturally, be such a well-known figure in Russia, be part of high society, present a TV show – anyone who can behave like that is an ideal member of an illegals programme.
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    The growing hype was laced with another potent ingredient: anger over the spies’ betrayal. A Russian official told the Kommersant newspaper that an assassin had already been dispatched to deal with the defector who betrayed the illegals, though this seems to have been bravado. 30 Mr Putin, after an evening singing patriotic ditties with the returned spies, said grimly that traitors end up ‘in the gutter’ and blamed ‘treason’ for the spies’ exposure. This approach fits broader propaganda themes favoured by the regime: cynical Western penetration and manipulation of Russian society, the ruthless use of foreign money, and the Soviet-style heroism of the state’s servants in difficult conditions.
    In Russia’s glitzy, sex-obsessed media culture, Ms Chapman’s mysterious past and curvy figure were an easy sell. Joanna Seddon, an expert on branding, sees the ex-spy as a classic example of a celebrity who has ‘leveraged her misfortunes into not only media popularity but also tangible wealth’. She likens Ms Chapman to Martha Stewart, the billionaire American businesswoman who launched a triumphant commercial comeback after her five months in jail for insider trading. Each woman, she notes, ‘maintained the rightness of her actions throughout her troubles, providing a reason for her public to believe in her’. Having averted disaster and created a commercial triumph, the culmination of the propaganda response was to turn Ms Chapman into a political asset for a tired-looking regime that presides over a drab and increasingly backward country. Ms Chapman’s symbolic role in Young Guard provided the perfect platform. Yana Lantarova, the organisation’s Federal Charity Director, gushes about her new colleague:
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    She’s a very profound person – she loves her homeland sincerely. In the short time that she’s joined us she’s learnt how to speak sincerely and convincingly about it.
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    Ms Lantarova adds helpfully that Ms Chapman ‘fires up’ the movement’s male members. The enthusiasm is not universal. Kirill Schito, a member of the movement’s governing council and of the Moscow municipal assembly, is slightly less flattering, insisting that the benefit is ‘mutual’ and that Ms Chapman is ‘quite smart’.