I really don’t trust anything printed in Al Reuters ...
I don't know why you would doubt KGB-Putin would praise Cold War 1 spies, but here's the same story from Accuracy In Media, a Conservative site:
"Putin, a former Soviet KGB officer, has just made headlines praising the Russian spies who stole U.S. atom bomb secrets.
Putin said, “You know, when the States already had nuclear weapons and the Soviet Union was only building them, we got a significant amount of information through Soviet foreign intelligence channels.” Putin was undoubtedly referring to atom bomb spies Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, members of the Communist Party who were executed for stealing U.S. atom bomb secrets on behalf of the Soviet Union. ..."
http://www.aim.org/aim-column/the-russians-and-american-progressives-together-again/