Russian citizen suspected of spying for CIA arrested in Moscow


nsnbc : A Moscow court has charged Alexei Zhitnyuk with spying for the United States’ Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and with high treason. The charges, most likely linked to the Russian Navy in Crimea, and lack of publicly available information prompt a number questions.

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Crimea has been at the center of conflict for centuries and continues to be a hot spot. Click on map to enlarge.

The arrest of Alexei Zhitnyuk comes only weeks after a shipyard worker was deported to Ukraine for allegedly working with Ukrainian security forces. Moreover, in September 2017 two Russian citizens were arrested in Crimea on suspicion of passing information about Russia’s Black Sea fleet to Ukrainian authorities.

On Tuesday, December 12, 2017, the State-run RIA Novosti news agency reported that Zhitnyuk was under suspicion of giving the CIA sensitive information relating to the Russian navy.

Alexei Zhitnyuk was arrested on November 30 and will be kept in custody until January 29, said Court spokeswoman Yekaterina Krasnova according to the Interfax news agency.  “The defense already appealed this decision,” she was cited by Interfax as saying, though she added that the appeal date had not been set.

The court did not provide any additional information about the case because of its “top secret” status. The case of Zhitnyuk and the other cases mentioned above pose a number of questions. The most simple and at the same time complex issues could indeed arise over the court’s jurisdiction.

The Russian Federation considers Crimea as part of the Russian Federation after Crimea acceded to the Federation following a referendum on independence. However, Ukraine and other countries maintain that Russia annexed Crimea in circumvention of international law.

The 1973 UN Declaration of principles stipulates that the right to self-determination and the right to territorial integrity have equal standing but that the one cannot be implemented in violation of the other.  In other words, as long as Ukraine hasn’t accepted Crimea’s independence and accession to the Russian Federation, the peninsula remains Ukrainian territory under Ukrainian, and arguably, under international law.

“Crimean Russians” can in other words rightfully perceive themselves as “Ukrainian citizens” who are fulfilling their patriotic duty by passing on information about the Russian naval forces to Ukraine or the intelligence services of those countries whom the Ukrainian government perceives as allies. One question would be “can a person who was Russofied against his will be lawfully treated as a Russian citizen who would commit high treason by passing on information to authorities of that country whose citizenship was taken from him?”

CH/L – nsnbc 12.12.2017



Source Article from https://nsnbc.me/2017/12/12/russian-citizen-suspected-of-spying-for-cia-arrested-in-moscow/

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