A spokesman at the Russian Foreign Ministry said Tuesday that Michael McFaul will be asked to give explanation following the detention of the US agent identified as Ryan C. Fogle.
Russia’s Federal Security Service announced Tuesday that it had detained a Central Intelligence Agency officer during an attempt to recruit a Russian agent, saying the American had brought a large sum of cash, technical devices and “appearance disguising means.”
Photographs that appeared on Russian news sites showed a man in a blond wig, a blue checked shirt and a baseball cap being pinned to the ground, evidently by a Russian officer, and later sitting at a desk in an F.S.B. office, grim-faced.
The CIA agent was held overnight and then handed over to US officials at the embassy.
The relationship between Washington and Moscow has been tense, after both sides sanctioned the other’s citizens from entering their countries.
On April 13, Russia banned 18 US officials from traveling to the country. The measure came as a response to Washington’s move a day earlier to publish a list of Russian officials targeted for sanctions under the so-called “Magnitsky Act.”
The act was passed on December 6, 2012, to enforce financial sanctions and visa bans against Russian officials suspected of ties to the death of Russian lawyer, Sergei Magnitsky, who died in jail in 2009.