A former U.S. Embassy employee has been arrested in Russia and charged with conspiracy, according to the Russian state news agency Tass. Robert Shonov, who was identified as a former employee of the U.S. Embassy in Russia, was arrested in the city of Vladivostok and taken to Lefortovo Prison in Moscow. The State Department had no immediate comment on the report.
Tass, quoting an anonymous law enforcement official, said that Mr. Shonov was accused of “collaboration on a confidential basis with a foreign state or international or foreign organization.” No court date has been set.
Lefortovo is a notorious high-security prison whose inmates currently include Evan Gershkovich, the Wall Street Journal correspondent who was accused of espionage in March, and Paul Whelan, a former U.S. Marine who is serving a 16-year sentence on what the United States has said are fabricated charges of espionage. In the Soviet era, the K.G.B. kept Soviet dissidents at the prison, and it has been used more recently to isolate opponents of the Kremlin.