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Russia detains American in Moscow suspected of spying Russia detains American in Moscow on suspicion of spying
(35 minutes later)
Russia’s FSB security service had detained a US citizen in Moscow accused of spying, it said on Monday, the latest in a series of espionage cases between Russia and the west. Russia’s domestic security service, the FSB, has detained a US citizen accused of spying, it announced on Monday.
The FSB domestic security service said the American was arrested on Friday “while carrying out an act of espionage”. The FSB, the successor of the Soviet-era KGB, said in a statement that the American was arrested on Friday “while carrying out an act of espionage”.
A criminal case had been opened, the FSB said in a statement, under Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code, which allows for sentences of up to 20 years in prison. The statement, in Russian, used a name that appeared to translate as Paul Whelan and said a criminal case had been opened “under article 276 of the criminal code (Espionage)”.
The statement identified the American in Russian, using a name that appeared to translate as Paul Whelan. No further details were given. People convicted of spying in Russia face a prison term of between 10 and 20 years.
No other details were immediately available. The US Embassy in Moscow could not immediately be reached for comment on Monday, a public holiday in Russia.
The arrest came with Moscow embroiled in a number of spy scandals with the west and after president Vladimir Putin accused western nations of using espionage cases to try undermine an increasingly powerful Russia. News of the detention comes on the day after Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, expressed a desire for better relations with the US in 2019. In a new year letter to the US president, Donald Trump, he said Moscow was ready for dialogue on a “wide-ranging agenda”.
US intelligence services have accused Moscow of interfering in the 2016 presidential election and earlier this month convicted Russian Maria Butina of acting as an illegal foreign agent. A Kremlin statement said Putin’s letter had stressed that Russia-US relations were “the most important factor for providing strategic stability and international security”.
Butina faces up to six months in prison, followed by likely deportation. Russia has sought to improve relations with the west after a year in which diplomacy was at its frostiest since the cold war.
Prosecutors said she launched a plan in March 2015 to develop ties with the Republican party with the aim of influencing US foreign policy. Britain expelled 23 Russian diplomats over accusations that the Kremlin was behind the novichok attack in March on the former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter, Yulia, in Salisbury. Russia denied any involvement in the poisoning and, in retaliation, sent home the same number of British embassy workers.
Russian military intelligence agents were also accused in the poisoning earlier this year of former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England. In October, the US justice department accused seven Russians of being GRU military intelligence officers, charging them with hacking and wire fraud. Four men from that group were expelled from the Netherlands in April after being caught allegedly attempting to hack the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons.
The Skripals survived but a local woman died after picking up a discarded perfume bottle that police think was used to carry out the attack. On 13 December, Maria Butina, a 30-year-old Russian citizen and suspected spy, pleaded guilty in a Washington DC court to conspiracy to act as an agent of a foreign government.
Relations between Russia and the west have hit a new low following the incidents, with the United States and Europe hitting Moscow with waves of sanctions over the spy scandals and the conflict in Ukraine. There are, however, small signs of improved relations between Russia and the UK: Russia’s embassy in London on Friday said that Moscow and London had agreed to return some staff to the respective embassies after the tit-for-tat expulsion of diplomats earlier this year.
In his annual press conference this month, Putin said western pressure was aimed at restraining a resurgent Russia.
“There is only one aim: to hold back Russia’s development as a possible competitor,” he said. “This is connected with the growth of Russia’s power.”
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