Russia’s domestic security service said on Monday that a former employee of the U.S. Consulate in Vladivostok had been charged with illegally collecting information about the war in Ukraine and passing it to American officials.
The Federal Security Service, or F.S.B., announced the charges against Robert Shonov, a Russian national who was detained in May. The charges carry a punishment of three to eight years imprisonment.
A State Department spokesman, Matthew Miller, said in a statement that the allegations against Mr. Shonov were “wholly without merit” and that the arrest “only highlights the increasingly repressive actions the Russian government is taking against its own citizens.”
“We strongly protest the Russian security services’ attempts — furthered by Russia’s state-controlled media — to intimidate and harass our employees,” he said.
Mr. Miller said that Mr. Shonov had worked for the U.S. Consulate in Vladivostok for 25 years and began working for a private contractor for the U.S. Embassy in Moscow in April 2021, after the Russian government ordered the firings of all Russian staff at U.S. diplomatic missions in the country.
Mr. Miller said that Mr. Shonov’s job had been to write summaries of news media reports “from publicly available Russian media sources,” and that his employment was “in strict compliance with Russia’s laws and regulations.”
In its statement on Monday, the F.S.B. said that it was seeking to question two employees of the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, whom it accused of directing Mr. Shonov’s activities.
Mr. Shonov’s arrest came amid tensions in U.S.-Russian relations over President Vladimir V. Putin’s invasion of Ukraine and Russia’s detention in March of Evan Gershkovich, a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Gershkovich has been accused by the Russian government of espionage and is being held in pretrial detention, which was extended last Thursday to at least Nov. 30.
American officials have vehemently denied the charges against both Mr. Gershkovich and Paul Whelan, a corporate security executive and former U.S. Marine, who was arrested in Moscow in 2018 on espionage charges and given a 16-year prison sentence. The Biden administration considers both to be wrongly detained, or essentially political prisoners.
