Anna Chapman, the Russian sleeper agent at the centre of a spy ring in the US, is to become a leader of the youth wing of Vladimir Putin's United Russia party, according to reports in Moscow.

Russian media said Chapman would be appointed at a congress of Molodaya Gvardiya (Young Guard) in the capital tomorrow. "Chapman will become the head of one of the new governing bodies of Molodaya Gvardiya," a source in the organisation told a newspaper.

Vedomosti said Chapman, 28, would be assigned work with "patriots and young businesspeople".

Nationalist youth groups like Molodaya Gvardiya are seen by the Kremlin as an essential tool in attempts to suppress "the orange scenario" - a reference to mass protests known as the orange revolution that forced a change in Ukraine's leadershipin 2005.

Putin, the prime minister, has already expressed his admiration for Chapman and the other nine deep-cover Russian agents who were exposed and ejected from the US in June.

In July, he got together with the putative spies - who were never formally accused of espionage - to sing nostalgic Soviet songs. He praised them for "suffering daily dangers" and predicted they would "work in worthy places" and "have bright and interesting lives".

President Dmitry Medvedev later awarded the agents unspecified state honours in a ceremony at the Kremlin.

Molodaya Gvardiya is a fanatically pro-Putin youth group that fell under suspicion last month, when newspaper reporter Oleg Kashin was beaten close to death with an iron bar outside his home in Moscow. The group had earlier denounced Kashin as a "journalist-traitor"