Kremlin says its spies are looking into case of suspected CIA mole

MOSCOW: The Kremlin said on Wednesday it didn’t know if one of its former employees had been a CIA informant, but that Russia’s intelligence services were looking into the case.

CNN reported on Monday that the United States had successfully extracted one of its highest-level covert sources inside Russia in 2017.

The official may have been a man called Oleg Smolenkov, Russian daily newspaper Kommersant reported on Tuesday. He is reported to have disappeared with his wife, Antonina, and three children while on holiday in Montenegro in June 2017.

“I can only state that this employee existed, that he was fired, and that we don’t know whether he was a spy or not. This is a question for the intelligence services – they are doing their job,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters on a conference call.