Robert Shonov is being held for allegedly collaborating with a foreign organization on a ‘confidential basis’.
According to a local media report, the United States has “strongly” condemned the detention of a former consulate employee who was arrested in Russia.
In a rack On Tuesday, a spokesman for the US State Department rejected allegations against Robert Shonov, a Russian who worked for more than 25 years at the now-closed US consulate in Vladivostok on Russia’s east coast.
“The allegations against Mr. Shonov are completely baseless,” spokesman Matthew Miller said.
Russian state media TASS reported on Monday that Shonov had been arrested in Vladivostok and transferred to Moscow’s Lefortovo Prison, the same detention center where two US citizens have been held on charges of espionage.
Citing law enforcement sources, TASS explained that Shonov had been questioned after his arrest. He was eventually charged with collaborating “on a confidential basis with a foreign state, [or] international or foreign organization”.
Miller quashed that accusation in Tuesday’s statement.
The fact that Shonov “was targeted by the statute of ‘confidential cooperation’ highlights the Russian Federation’s brazen use of increasingly repressive laws against its own citizens,” Miller wrote.
He explained that in April 2021, Russia issued an order barring local residents from enlisting in the US diplomatic corps. Since then, Shonov has been working for a company “contracted to provide services to the US Embassy in Moscow in strict accordance with Russian laws and regulations”.
Miller tried to downplay any role Shonov might have played in embassy affairs. “Mr Shonov’s sole role at the time of his arrest was to compile media summaries of press releases from publicly available Russian media sources,” he said.
Still, members of the Russian government welcomed Shonov’s arrest in state media reports.
“It is clear that unacceptable activities of unfriendly states are not slowing down, but are increasing,” Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told TASS.
Tuesday’s statement is the latest indication of heightened tensions between Russia and the US, particularly in the wake of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.
Earlier this year, the US denounced the detention of US citizen and Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich, with the State Department saying he had been “wrongfully” detained by Russian authorities on espionage charges.
“Journalism is not a crime. We condemn the Kremlin’s continued suppression of independent voices in Russia and its ongoing war against the truth,” State Department spokesman Vedant Patel said in a statement on April 10.
Gershkovich himself has denied the allegations, including allegations that he was collecting state secrets about Russia’s military-industrial complex.
The US has also urged Russia to release another US citizen, former Marine Paul Whelan, who was sentenced to 16 years in prison for espionage in 2020.
Whelan also dismissed the charges against him: In court, he appeared in the defendant’s coffin with a sign that read, “Sham Trial!”
Both Whelan and Gershkovich have spent time in Lefortovo Prison, a maximum-security detention facility with a history dating back to Tsarist times. Gershkovich is currently imprisoned there and Whelan has spent 20 months in the facility awaiting trial.
Last month, US envoy to the United Nations Linda Thomas-Greenfield called for the release of both men, saying they were being used as “political bargaining chips”.
“Using humans as pawns is a strategy of weakness. These are not the actions of a responsible country. And while Russia plays political games, real people suffer,” said Thomas-Greenfield.
In December, Russia and the US negotiated a prisoner exchange that would free imprisoned basketball player Brittney Griner in exchange for Viktor Bout, a Russian former arms dealer serving a 25-year prison sentence in the US.