Lithuania detains suspected Russian spy

Born in 1977, the suspect has been detained for three months.

According to the press release, the detained person was an employee of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). He is identified by his initials N.F.

“The detained individual carried out an intelligence operation against Lithuania, it was aimed at penetrating Lithuania’s governing institutions, Lithuanian law-enforcement and intelligence services,” the Prosecutor General’s Office said.

The man was detained last Wednesday, and his custody was sanctioned by court on Thursday.

According to information provided by the State Security Department, the detention prevented “access to the information known to top leaders of Lithuania only with the aim of manipulating and influencing decision-making processes in Lithuania at the top level”.

A pre-trial investigation is underway, based on a Penal Code article stipulating punishment for “a person who, in performing an assignment of another state or organization thereof, seizes, purchases or otherwise collects or communicates the information constituting a state secret of the Republic of Lithuania or another information of interest to the intelligence of a foreign state.”

This crime carries a prison sentence of three to fifteen years.

The pre-trial investigation is being carried out by the Prosecutor General’s Office’s Organized Crimes and Corruption Investigation Department in cooperation with the State Security Department.

It’s a four spying case disclosed by Lithuanian law enforcement and intelligence over the last few years.

Last year, the State Security Department detained two people who allegedly cooperated with the Belarusian military intelligence service (GRU), including Romuald Lipskij, a former employee of state enterprise Oro Navgacija (Air Navigation), and Andrej Osurkov, a former paramedic of the Lithuanian army. The two cases are now in court.

On the last day of 2014, an officer of the Lithuanian Air Force was detained, suspected of having spied for a foreign state and presented information, including classified, that was of interest for the foreign state. The person to whom the detained army officer gave the collected information was also detained. The foreign state the two suspects spied for was not disclosed then and no additional information about this case has been published so far.