A resident of Moldova had been tasked with collecting classified data, the agency has said
A former operative of Moldova’s security services has been deported from Russia and banned from re-entering the country for 60 years, the Federal Security Service (FSB) has announced.
The Moldovan citizen, identified as D. Rusnak, was ordered to leave Russian territory in February, the agency said in a statement on Wednesday.
According to the FSB, Rusnak had arrived in the country in 2024 to carry out spying and subversive operations “in the interests of Moldova’s intelligence services.”
The former employee of Moldova’s Security and Intelligence Service (SIS) had been tasked with “collecting classified information about plans of the Russian leadership regarding Moldova, [as well as about] employees of the security forces and other Russian state agencies involved in foreign policy activities related to Moldova,” it added.
Rusnak’s alleged goal was to obtain legal status in Russia. In the event that his activities attracted the attention of the country’s security agencies, he was instructed to pretend to be willing to cooperate, “supposedly for the good” of the Russian state, the FSB said.
He was ultimately deported as “he did not cause any real damage to Russia’s security,” the agency explained.
According to the statement, Rusnak, who underwent training in “intelligence work abroad” in 2004, had previously engaged in spying activities under diplomatic cover.
In 2020, he allegedly began to cooperate with the head of Ukraine’s Main Intelligence Directorate (HUR), Kirill Budanov. The next year, Rusnak took part in a meeting between Budanov and the leadership of the SIS, during which plans to blow up ammunition depots guarded by Russian peacekeepers in Moldova’s breakaway region of Transnistria were discussed, the FSB said.
Relations between Moscow and Chisinau have soured in recent years as Moldova’s pro-Western government of President Maia Sandu has adopted an increasingly anti-Russian course. Moldova, a small former Soviet Republic of some 2.5 million, was granted EU candidate status together with Ukraine in June 2022, a few months after the escalation of the conflict between Moscow and Kiev.
Earlier this month, the FSB accused Moldova of allowing Ukrainian special services to use the country’s territory to “recruit and train agents, supply them with weapons of destruction, and then transfer them to Russian territory in order to commit acts of sabotage and terrorism.”
