From April 1985 to 1987, he was a resident spy in Washington, D.C.[2] While there, he held a cover job as a correspondent for TASS, a Soviet state-owned news agency.

[6] In his book, Shvets alleges he had recruited two key sources of political intelligence — "Socrates", a former aide to President Jimmy Carter with strong ties to Greece, and his wife "Sputnitsa" (Russian: Спутница, lit.

[3] Shvets was a key source for the 2021 book American Kompromat by Craig Unger,[3][8] which details claims that Donald Trump is a Soviet, and later Russian, asset.

[9] In 2006, Shvets emerged as a potentially key witness in the poisoning of ex-Federal Security Service officer Alexander Litvinenko.

In an interview with the BBC, broadcast on 16 December 2006, Shvets said that he and Litvinenko had compiled a report investigating the activities of senior Kremlin officials on behalf of a British company looking to invest "dozens of millions of dollars" in a project in Russia.