Former US Embassy employee arrested, held at same Moscow prison as WSJ reporter: Russian report

Russia’s Federal Security Service arrested and charged Robert Shonov, identified as a former employee of the U.S. Embassy in Russia, with conspiracy, Russian state-owned news agency TASS reported Monday. 

The U.S. State Department on Tuesday said it "strongly condemns the reported arrest of Robert Shonov, a former employee of U.S. Mission Russia."

"The allegations against Mr. Shonov are wholly without merit," the State Department said. "Mr. Shonov is a Russian national who was employed by the U.S. Consulate General in Vladivostok for more than 25 years.  Following the Russian government’s April 2021 order forcing termination of all local staff employed at the U.S. Mission to Russia, Mr. Shonov was employed by a company contracted to provide services to U.S. Embassy in Moscow in strict compliance with Russia’s laws and regulations."

"Like any diplomatic mission in the world – including Russia’s Mission to the United States – the U.S. Embassy contracts for local services to operate its diplomatic mission. Mr. Shonov’s only role at the time of his arrest was to compile media summaries of press items from publicly available Russian media sources," the statement added. "His being targeted under the ‘confidential cooperation’ statute highlights the Russian Federation’s blatant use of increasingly repressive laws against its own citizens."

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State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel also addressed Shonov's arrest during a news briefing Tuesday. 

"He is a Russian citizen, and so we were not notified of his arrest and do not have the ability to visit or communicate with him," Patel said. "His targeting under the confidential cooperation statute highlights that the Russian Federation's blatant use of the increasingly repressive legislation against its own citizens. It's quite stark and deeply concerning, but I'm just not going to get ahead of this. Beyond that, as this continues to be an evolving situation." 

"I'm not going to get into the specifics of the channels that we are working to secure the release of wrongfully detained American citizens, Evan Gershkovich and Paul Whelan. We have no higher priority than securing their release, and we continue to work this from all angles," Patel added. "It's something that the president is engaged in. And Secretary Blinken, Ambassador Carstens and others in both of those cases, we continue to push for consistent and regular consular access that is in line with Russia's consular conventions."

TASS quoted an unnamed law enforcement source as having said Shonov had been detained in Vladivostok, a major Pacific port city in Russia near the borders with China and North Korea. 

After questioning, Shonov was placed under arrest and charged with committing a crime "under Article 275.1 of the Criminal Code (collaboration on a confidential basis with a foreign state or international or foreign organization)," the source reportedly said. He was taken to Lefortovo Prison in Moscow for further questioning. 

TASS reported that he could face up to eight years in prison and no court date has been scheduled. 

At a previous press briefing Monday, Patel told members of the media that he had seen the report. 

"I don’t have anything additional to offer at this time," Patel said, according to the New York Times. 

Lefortovo prison, where American journalist Evan Gershkovich has been jailed on espionage charges, dates from the czarist era and has been a terrifying symbol of repression since Soviet times. The inconspicuous, pale yellow complex in eastern Moscow was built as a military penitentiary in 1881 and was used for low-ranking convicts sentenced to relatively short terms. It gained its notoriety after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution, when it became a top detention facility for the Soviet secret police.

Under Soviet leader Josef Stalin’s Great Terror of mass arrests in the 1930s, Lefortovo was one of the main pre-trial detention facilities for "enemies of the people," equipped with torture chambers to extract confessions. Stalin’s sadistic secret police chief, Lavrentiy Beria, personally took part in some prisoner interrogations and executions in its basement.

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Vasily Blyukher, one of the highest-ranking Red Army officers, was among those who died in 1938 after being tortured in Lefortovo.

Even though it was formally transferred to Justice Ministry jurisdiction in 2005, the Federal Security Service, the top KGB successor agency that is known under its acronym FSB, has maintained de facto control of the facility, according to The Associated Press. 

Paul Whelan, a Michigan corporate security executive and a former Marine, was held in Lefortovo after his arrest in 2018 on espionage charges that his family and the U.S. government have said are baseless. After his conviction in 2020, Whelan was transferred to another prison to serve his 16-year sentence.

Lefortovo’s trademark is holding its prisoners in "total information isolation," Yevgeny Smirnov, a prominent lawyer who has defended espionage and treason suspects, told the AP. 

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Nicholas Daniloff, a Moscow correspondent for U.S. News and World Report, was put in Lefortovo after his 1986 arrest on bogus espionage accusations. He was released without charge 20 days later in a swap for an employee of the Soviet Union’s U.N. mission who was arrested by the FBI on spying charges. 

Gershkovich, a 31-year-old reporter for The Wall Street Journal, is the first American reporter to be arrested on espionage charges in Russia since Daniloff. The Journal denied the allegations and demanded Gershkovich’s release.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.