MOSCOW, March 31 (RAPSI) – Ukrainian Lieutenant Colonel Yuri Ivanchenko has been arrested in Russia on suspicion of espionage, the Federal Security Service (FSB) announced on Thursday.

Ivanchenko, the employee of the Ukrainian State Security Service’s counterintelligence division, entered Russia on the pretext of visiting relatives despite the exclusion for intelligence officers.

According to the statement, Ivanchenko was prepared by Ukraine’s State Security Service and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) for being entrenched in the FSB.

The Ukrainian State Security Service’s employee had to interest the FSB in his ability to extract secret information and to persuade to communicate with him through Kiev. At a certain point the CIA and the State Security Service planned to catch an FSB officer red-handed while receiving information from Ivanchenko, the statement says.

As Ivanchenko had been found out before he got a chance to diminish Russia’s security he would be deported to Ukraine and prohibited from entering Russia.