<i>Ex-husband says spy wife dominated by father in KGB </i>

A passenger reads the Daily Telegraph newspaper, featuring a front-page interview with the ex-husband of accused Russian spy Anna Chapman, on the underground in London yesterday. Photo: Reuters

The British ex-husband of a key figure in the Russia-US spy storm told how his glamorous former wife became "obnoxious" and dominated by her KGB father, in an interview published yesterday.
Alex Chapman told the Daily Telegraph he was suspicious that Anna Chapman, the flame-haired 28-year-old now in detention in the United States, had become "conditioned" even before their marriage collapsed in 2005.
He said he was surprised to hear she had gone to the United States because his ex-wife had always made disparaging remarks about Americans and said she did not want to go there.
Alex Chapman, now a 30-year-old trainee psychiatrist, told the Telegraph that he met then Anna Kushchenko at a London party in September 2001. They married five months later in Moscow after a whirlwind romance.
The Telegraph said British intelligence was now investigating whether she had worked as a spy when she lived in Britain or was recruited when she lived there.
"Anna told me her father had been high up in the ranks of the KGB. She said he had been an agent in 'old Russia'," he told the Telegraph.
The couple visited the father, Vasily Kushchenko, in Zimbabwe where he was officially working as a diplomat.
"Her father controlled everything in her life, and I felt she would have done anything for her dad. When I saw that she had been arrested on suspicion of spying it didn't come as much of a surprise to be honest."
The father seemed a "scary" man, he said.
"He didn't trust anyone. He asked me why I had chosen a Russian bride and asked what business I had done in Russia, and I said none," said the Briton.
"He was scary. He would never introduce me to other Russian people who came to the house and he always seemed to have a lot more security than the other diplomats.
"He had a Land Rover with blacked-out windows and there was always one car in front of it and one car behind," he added.
Alex Chapman said that at first his wife had been carefree and led a "bohemian" lifestyle but she changed dramatically during the four years of their marriage.
"When she was still living in London she fell in with a group of people who had a lot of influence. She would go to film premieres and became arrogant and obnoxious, always going on about powerful people she was meeting," he said.