The security service of Russia announced on Friday that it sentenced to 15 years in prison a US citizen, named Eugene Spector, who was accused of leaking the secrets of Russian biotechnology to the United States.
In its statement, the FSB accused Spector, a person who was born in Russia but emigrated to the US, of acting on behalf of the Pentagon. It claimed, “The American, acting in the interests of the Pentagon and a commercial organization affiliated with it, collected and transferred various information on biotechnological and biomedical topics, including those constituting state secrets, for the subsequent creation by the US of a system of high-speed genetic screening of the Russian population.”
Few details had been released about the spying case, as Spector was already serving a three-and-a-half-year sentence for bribery in Russia. According to reports from Russian state news agencies, Spector was sentenced to 13 years for spying, to be added to his earlier sentence for a total of 15 years served in a maximum-security colony.
The FSB would not say whether Spector had confessed during the secret court proceedings. Commenting on the sentence, the US Department of State said that it was aware of the case and “continued to follow closely as events continued to unfold”.
Meanwhile, the imprisonment of US citizens in Russia is becoming another point of controversy, further deteriorating relations between Washington and Moscow in the continued spillover of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. This summer more than two dozen people were freed-including Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and former US Marine Paul Whelan, both imprisoned in Russia-in a key prisoner exchange.
