Ashley Wenskoski, Senior
On December 28th, former U.S. Marine Paul Whelan was detained by Russia’s Federal Security Service in his hotel room in Moscow. On Wednesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Whelan was “caught red-handed,” and cited that “He was detained at the moment he was carrying out specific illegal actions in the hotel.” Whelan has military experience and holds citizenship and passports in the United States, Britain, Canada, and Ireland. It is unclear how he has partial citizenship in four countries. An unnamed Russian intelligence source claimed that Whelan was detained five minutes after receiving a cyber thumb drive of a list of employees of a secret Russian state agency. Apparently, the employee list that he was caught with was highly coveted and had long been of interest to U.S. spies, raising suspicions about Whelan’s intentions.
Foreign Minister Lavrov did say that Whelan’s investigation was not motivated by any desire to exchange him for any Russian citizens that are currently detained in the U.S. Russia also claimed that they would allow U.S. diplomats to visit Whelan for a second time and an Irish diplomat is scheduled for an upcoming visit as well. While Whelan’s family claims that he is innocent and was purely in Moscow to attend a wedding, he faces up to twenty years in prison if convicted of espionage.
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