MOSCOW (Reuters) -Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) said on Tuesday it had detained a 33-year-old woman with dual Russian-U.S. citizenship on suspicion of treason for raising funds for Ukraine’s armed forces.
The resident of Los Angeles had been collecting funds for a Ukrainian organisation whose ultimate beneficiary was the Ukrainian army, the FSB said in a statement. It said it had opened a treason case against the woman, who was not named.
The FSB, the main successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB, said in its statement that it had “suppressed the illegal activities of a 33-year-old resident of Los Angeles, who has dual citizenship of Russia and the United States of America, involved in providing financial assistance to a foreign state in activities directed against the security of our country”.
“Since February 2022, she has been proactively collecting funds in the interests of one of the Ukrainian organisations, which were subsequently used to purchase tactical medicine items, equipment, weapons and ammunition by the Armed Forces of Ukraine.”
A spokesperson for the U.S. embassy in Moscow said: “We are aware of the reports, however due to privacy considerations we have nothing further to convey at this moment.”
(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Andrew Heavens and Gareth Jones)
