Russia plays down US reports about spy in Vladimir Putin’s inner circle
- A Kremlin spokesman dismissed the reports by CNN and The New York Times as ‘the genre of pulp fiction’ and ‘crime reading’
- But he did confirm a low-level official who Russian media suggested was the agent had worked at the Kremlin before being fired
A source familiar with US monitoring of Russian activities confirmed that such a CIA informant inside the Russian government did exist and that the informant had been extracted and brought to the US.
The source indicated that US officials were seriously concerned that Kremlin officials had made public what they claimed was the individual’s name.
Russian daily newspaper Kommersant said on Tuesday the official may have been a man called Oleg Smolenkov, who is reported to have disappeared with his wife and three children while on holiday in Montenegro in 2017 and is now reported to be living in the US.
Kommersant published a picture of a house in Virginia which it said had been bought by a man called Smolenkov in 2018.
Asked about the matter, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said that Smolenkov had really worked in the Russian presidential administration but had been fired in 2016/17.
“It is true that Smolenkov worked in the presidential administration, but he was fired several years ago. His job was not at a senior official level,” he said.
“I can’t confirm that … I don’t know whether he was an agent. I can only confirm that there was such a person in the presidential administration, who was later sacked.
“All this US media speculation about who urgently extracted who and saved who from who and so on – this is more the genre of pulp fiction, crime reading, so let’s leave it up to them,” said Peskov.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said separately on Tuesday he had never heard of Smolenkov.
“I have never seen this man, have never met him, and have never monitored his career or movements,” Lavrov said.
Lavrov said on Tuesday that nobody had divulged any secrets to him at the meeting with Trump.
A US government source also insisted that Trump did not disclose secrets, such as the informant’s existence or identity, at any meeting with Russian officials.
