Russia security agency arrests CIA-trained Ukrainian spy

Moscow says it has captured a CIA-trained Ukrainian officer, who attempted to infiltrate Russia’s main security agency.

Yuriy Ivanchenko was detained upon arrival on the Russian territory on Saturday, the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) said in a Thursday statement.

Prior to his entry, the FSB, the main KGB successor agency, reportedly received information that the officer had been trained by the Ukrainian Security Forces (USF) and the US spy agency CIA to infiltrate the FSB by offering to spy for the Russian agency.

The counter-intelligence officer entered Russia under the pretext of visiting relatives, while the authorities in Kiev prohibit special security forces from leaving the country, according to the report.

His mission was to approach an FSB employee by providing him with false information, paving the way for Ukrainian security forces and the CIA to arrest the Russian security official, the statement added.

The FSB further said Ivanchenko would be deported to Ukraine and banned from entering Russia.

In Kiev, chief of the Ukrainian Security Service Vasyl Grytsak confirmed in comments to the Interfax news agency that Ivanchenko was an SBU employee but insisted he went to Russia on his own volition.

Moscow and Kiev are locked in a dispute after the Crimean Peninsula's integration into Russia in 2014 and Ukraine's war on pro-Russians fighting to independence in the country's east.

US fueling Ukraine violence

The CIA is accused of stoking the 2014 political tensions that led to the ouster of the former pro-Russia government in Ukraine.

Since the removal of the former Ukrainian president, Viktor Yanukovych, the United States has stepped up its military aid to Kiev amid a war with pro-Russia forces in the east.

On Thursday, the United States said it would go ahead with plans to provide an additional $335 million in military assistance to Ukraine

The news came after a meeting between US Vice President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko in Washington on the sidelines of a nuclear security summit there.

Last May, the US signed its second $1 billion loan deal for Ukraine to help it fight pro-Russians in the country’s flashpoint east and jolt its tattered economy.

During his visit to Washington, Poroshenko criticized the international community for what he called its reluctance to provide weapons to the Ukrainian military.

Reacting to the developments, the Kremlin press secretary Dmitry Peskov said foreign arms supplies to Ukraine would not help settle the crisis gripping the country’s eastern parts.

“Of course, there is no way the delivery of lethal weapons to Ukraine from abroad will help resolve the internal Ukrainian crisis and fulfill the Minsk agreements, considering an increase in the number of provocations staged on the contact line,” the Russian official said.

He was referring to the peace deal signed between Kiev and pro-Russia forces in Minsk, Blarus, in February 2015. Since then, however, both parties have, on numerous occasions, accused each other of breaking the ceasefire.

The crisis has left more than 9,000 people dead and over 20,000 others injured, according to the United Nations.

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