CIS

Home page

CIS

Kremlin reveals Russian official claimed to be CIA spy worked in Presidential Administration

10 September 2019 15:02 (UTC +04:00)

Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov told a Tuesday press conference that ex-Russian official Oleg Smolenkov, who has been dubbed a CIA spy in the US media, used to work for the presidential administration. He noted that Smolenkov had been fired many years ago and that he never had contact with the Russian president, APA reports.

CNN previously reported that the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had extracted one of its agents, who allegedly spied on the Kremlin, in 2017 over purported fears for his safety.

"[Smolenkov] was fired several years ago under an internal directive. He didn't hold any high-ranking posts, so called [presidentially]-appointed posts […] All these speculations in US media outlets about urgently extracting him, from whom he was saved and so on - this, you know, is a kind of a 'Pulp Fiction'", he said.

At the same time, the spokesman failed to confirm if the man in question had indeed been hired by the CIA to spy on Moscow, citing a lack of such information. He further added that "everything is fine with the work of the Russian counterintelligence service".