The UK has admitted it was spying on Russia six years ago with the help of a fake rock, so an unbelievable Russian TV-programme about that unique way of spying was actually true.

      In January 2006, a report on Russian television claimed there was proof that British spies were using electronic equipment hidden inside a fake rock to exchange information between agents and embassy staff. 

      According to video footage, an agent passed by the rock and download data from his portable computer, while a diplomat later collected it in a similar way.

      The information and video fragments of that operation looked so incredible, that is was considered as just another piece of anti-Western propaganda dreamt up by Kremlin-backed journalists.

      But this year Jonathan Powell, then-Prime Minister Tony Blair's chief of staff, gave a special interview within the BBC documentary film about Russia. He said that Russians must have known about the spying hardware for some time and exposed it at a politically opportune moment.

      “Ever since I made that program six years ago – I’ve been haunted by everyone,” says Arkady Mamontov, a Russian TV journalist who made the scandalous film. "People simply laughed at me. Now I want to thank the man who admitted to the English special service’s operation. We were right after all!”

      The TV-report also implied that there may have been further links between the two sides of their jobs in Russia, and said the spy scandal discredited the fine idea of NGOs, as Britain's most alleged spy working in Moscow, Christopher Doe, was a cashier for several NGOs, including the Moscow Helsinki Group. 

Sources: Lenta.ru RIA Novosti Russia Today Image: vokrugsveta.ru