The Russian government says it has arrested a senior Ukrainian intelligence officer, who was allegedly trained by the United States Central Intelligence Agency and tasked with infiltrating the Russian secret services. In a statement published on Thursday, Russia’s Federal Security Service, known as FSB, said the alleged infiltrator is a “senior level employee” of the SBU, the Security Service of Ukraine. The SBU is Ukraine’s primary counterterrorism and counterintelligence agency, with much of its output focused on the Russian Federation.
The FSB statement identified the
Ukrainian man as Lieutenant Colonel Yuriy Ivanchenko, but did not
release further information about his background and identity, nor did
it specify the details of his activities in Russia. According to the
Russians, Ivanchenko allegedly entered the country in recent weeks,
ostensibly in order to visit family members who live in Russia. But his
real goal, according to the FSB, was to make contact with Russian
intelligence and infiltrate the country’s security structure. Moscow
says that Ivanchenko had planned to pose as a willing spy, namely an
employee of Ukrainian intelligence who was offering to provide
information to Russia. He was not a genuine spy, however, but rather a
‘dangle’ —namely someone posing as a genuine spy, but who is in fact
attempting to deceive a rival intelligence agency by knowingly giving it
misleading or inaccurate information.
Moreover, the Russians claim that
Ivanchenko was being jointly run by the SBU and the CIA, and that the
American intelligence agency had trained him to pose as a ‘dangle’ in
order to collect information about FSB activities in Ukraine. The goal
of the CIA, said Moscow, was to “lure an FSB employee and capture him
with incriminating information”. However, the FSB statement said that
Ivanchenko’s SBU connection and CIA affiliation were known to Russia
prior to his arrival in the country, as he had previously tried to offer
his services to Moscow. He was therefore arrested and will be deported
in the coming days with a persona non grata (unwelcome person) designation. The CIA and SBU have not commented on Russia’s allegations.
No comments:
Post a Comment