RF Foreign Intelligence Service comments on the detention of the suspects of espionage for Russia

Spy scandals "should not be elevated to a high political level and they should not darken relations between countries," Boris Labusov, the head of the press centre for the Foreign Intelligence Service, told reporters in Moscow on Wednesday. The day before it became known that FBI agent Robert Philip Hanssen had been arrested in the U.S. and charged with giving classified information to Russian special services. On the same day, the fact that a person suspected of spying for Russia had been arrested in Sweden, became public, Interfax reports. The Foreign Intelligence Service "does not comment on statements on the involvement or non-involvement of this or that person in the activity of Russian special services, and the same practice is accepted in all special services of the world," Labusov said. "As long as there is the state, state interests and the need to protect these interests, intelligence will continue to exist. And as long as intelligence exists, counter-intelligence will continue to exist as well, and therefore agents will continue to be discovered," Labusov said.