Russia is opening a new chapter in open tension with the United States over the imprisonment of its citizens and the battle between its intelligence agencies. The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) reported on Thursday the arrest of a US citizen for alleged espionage. According to Moscow, the detainee is “suspected of having collected information on biological issues that would affect the security of the Russian Federation.” Washington has not yet responded to this arrest.
The Russian security forces have announced the opening of a court case against the citizen “for espionage.” According to Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code, it is a serious crime punishable by 10 to 20 years in prison. The FSB has not released any further details of the case or the suspect’s identity.
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The propaganda about the alleged threat of biological weapons against Russia was one of the pretexts spread by the Kremlin at the beginning of the war, although it was forgotten over the months. Moscow told the UN Security Council in March that the US had about 30 laboratories in Ukraine to develop biological weapons containing plague, anthrax and cholera pathogens. Washington reiterated that this network of laboratories is known in the countries of the former Soviet Union, as it results from the cooperation agreement of the Nunn-Lugar law to prevent pandemics and epidemics such as SARS in 2003 or the swine fever in Ukraine itself in 2012 and 2016. .
The accusation of working for foreign secret services weighs particularly heavily on Moscow. That’s why the recent successful prisoner swap between Moscow and Washington has excluded those imprisoned for espionage. Such is the situation of former US Marine Paul Whelan, who was sentenced to 16 years in a maximum security prison in 2020. The ex-soldier was eventually dropped from negotiations that resulted in December’s release of basketball player Brittney Griner in exchange for Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout.
Whelan, 52, of mixed nationalities (he’s also of British, Irish and Canadian heritage), is the first American to be convicted of espionage in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union. The prisoner, who was discharged from the army in 2008 for misconduct, claimed at trial that he was the victim of a politically motivated “fabricated case”.
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On January 7, Moscow released another US citizen without demanding the extradition of Russians in return. The Kremlin has approved the release of Navy veteran Taylor Dudley from prison. The 35-year-old ex-soldier was arrested in the Kaliningrad enclave in April 2022, after the war had already begun, because he had sneaked into this area from Poland irregularly. A Russian patrol located him at a music festival and the reason he violated the border has not been disclosed.
The clandestine battle between the Russian and American spy services has also made for another high-profile case in recent years. It’s about the escape of Oleg Smolenkov, a whistleblower for the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), with access to Vladimir Putin himself. The official in Russia’s presidential administration unexpectedly disappeared with his family in 2017, pretending to be vacationing in Montenegro.
Announcements of arrests of suspected foreign spies are common in Russia, particularly Ukrainian citizens since the illegal annexation of Crimea in 2014. The last such announcement came two days ago, on January 17, when the FSB reported the arrest of another suspected agent which it was ferrying from the North Ossetia region to Georgia.
The Russian security service pointed out that the man in question was a 28-year-old man who was born in a country in the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), a platform that includes several former Soviet republics and that does not include Ukraine. According to his version, the suspect worked for Kyiv, although he did not provide any further information.
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