Russia says British spied with fake rocks

MOSCOW – Russian officials on Monday accused four British diplomats of spying in an incident reminiscent of a Cold War-era James Bond movie, saying the alleged agents used short-range communications equipment hidden in fake rocks to exchange information with Russian sources.

The Federal Security Service, or FSB, the main successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB, also charged that one of the diplomats, Second Secretary Marc Doe of the British Embassy’s political section, channeled money from his government to prominent Russian human-rights groups.

The allegations follow strong international criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin earlier this month for signing a law that imposes strict new conditions on Russia’s nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and limits their ability to receive foreign funding. The measure was seen as an attempt to tighten the Kremlin’s control over society and limit the influence of government critics in the wake of uprisings in Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan in recent years.

FSB spokesman Sergei Ignatchenko told reporters that the Russian intelligence agency had confiscated one communication device installed in a fake rock, and that British intelligence had retrieved a similar device spotted by the Russians. A Russian accused of having contacts with the alleged British agents was detained and confessed to espionage, Ignatchenko asserted, according to a report by the RIA Novosti news agency.

The charges came a day after state-run RTR television aired videotape that it said showed British agents repeatedly approaching a fake stone and eventually carrying it away. The television program alleged that the diplomats and their Russian agents used hand-held computers to upload and download information to each other through the equipment hidden in the fake stones.

Officials at the British Embassy in Moscow and Foreign Office in London declined to comment on the espionage accusations.

Leaders of NGOs named in the Russian television program described the allegation that spies were helping to fund their organizations as a move aimed at dismantling groups critical of the Kremlin.

“What the government wants is to close down civil society in this country. And that means they have to close down us – noncommercial NGOs – which remain the last bastion of the Russian civil society not controlled by the government,” said Lyudmila Alexeyeva, chairwoman of the Moscow Helsinki Group.

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