Moscow:
Anna Chapman, the young Russian who garnered more attention for her looks than her skullduggery in the espionage scandal this summer, resurfaced here this week with the publication of provocative photographs of her posing in a hotel room overlooking the Kremlin.
Since she was returned in the spy exchange between the United States and Russia, Ms. Chapman has made no public appearances and offered no details about her activities in the United States, where she was accused by prosecutors of gathering information to aid Russia's foreign intelligence agency. Ms. Chapman pleaded guilty to a single count of conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government without properly registering.
But this week, she posted a photograph of herself in a cocktail dress on her Facebook page that apparently had been taken in a photo session with a magazine called Zhara, or Heat in Russian. At the same time, a popular Internet site, Lifenews.ru, displayed a short video that had been recorded during the session.
Other photographs from the session turned up in the Russian media, touching off a dispute over whether Ms. Chapman had released them prematurely. Zhara said it would sue Ms. Chapman.
On her Facebook page, Ms. Chapman issued a statement in English, saying, "The new pictures published today in Internet were made for my personal use and people that publish/print/sell those have no rights to them."
Most of the Russians in the spy scandal were considered so-called sleepers -- masking their Russian roots in an effort to blend in with American society, often in the suburbs. But Ms. Chapman did not hide that she was a Russian immigrant.