Russia has accused a former US consulate employee in Vladivostok of espionage. The already detained Russian citizen is said to have collected information related to the war against Ukraine.
The Russian domestic secret service FSB has accused a former US consulate employee in Vladivostok of espionage. The FSB said that the Russian citizen had been commissioned by the US embassy to collect information about the course of the “special military operation” in Ukraine. It was also about information about the effects of the Russian military’s conscription campaign on political dissatisfaction in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election. He passed this information on to staff at the US Embassy in Moscow.
The man is a Russian citizen who has been in custody since May. At that time, however, no details of the allegations against him were known. The US embassy said at the time that the staffer’s only job was to prepare summaries of press articles from publicly available Russian media sources.
The man faces eight years in prison
The detainee faces up to eight years in prison if convicted of colluding with foreign powers to harm national security. The government in Moscow has also used such arrests in the past to exchange its own agents abroad.
The incident threatens to further strain the already tense relationship between Russia and the United States. Earlier this year, the Russian secret service arrested US correspondent Evan Gershkovich of the Wall Street Journal on allegations of espionage. The accused and the newspaper deny the allegations, Gershkovich has been in custody since the end of March.