A former Special Forces soldier has been arrested and charged with colluding with Russian intelligence services and leaking classified national defense information during a decades-long espionage operation.
U.S. prosecutors in Virginia said on Friday that Peter Rafael Dzibinski Debbins, an ex-Green Beret, passed information to Russian spies describing the activities of his elite military unit and listing the names of Special Forces colleagues he thought that the Russians might be able to recruit. Debbins, 45, was charged with violating espionage laws.
“He considered himself pro-Russian and a faithful son of Russia,” the prosecutor said. “Debbins thought that United States of America was too dominant in the world and had to be cut to size. ”
The complaint provides an extraordinary level of detail about his decades-long relationship with the Russian intelligence services. Debbins began meeting with Russian agents since 1996, according to prosecutors, and was given the code name “Ikar Lesnikov.” In 2003, he allegedly went to a hotel in Chelyabinsk and met two Russian intelligence officers. They gave him a bottle of Cognac and a Russian military uniform, and offered him training in how to cheat polygraph tests, according to prosecutors
Over the years, prosecutors said, Debbins tried to hide his contacts with the Russians by not reporting on this communication about government disclosure forms.
“Debbins took his oath as a U.S. Army officer, betrayed the Special Forces and threatened the national security of our province,” said John Demers, the Assistant U.S. Attorney for National Security, in a statement.
It was not immediately clear who Debbins would represent in court.
Debbins’ arrest marks the second time this week that U.S. authorities have accused government personnel of espionage. On Monday, a former CIA officer, Alexander Yuk Ching Ma, was accused of giving classified information to the Chinese government.
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