Alleged unmasked CIA agent leaves Russia

Moscow, May 20 (IANS/RIA Novosti) Ryan Fogle, the man Russia's security services claimed to have captured last week as he tried to recruit a Russian to spy for the US, left Moscow Sunday, a media report said.

Fogle checked in on a flight at Moscow's Sheremetyevo airport, NTV said.

The Russian foreign ministry had earlier declared Fogle, a third secretary at the US Embassy in Moscow, persona non grata for "activity incompatible with his diplomatic status". He was told to leave Russia by May 20.

The Russian Federal Security Service claimed last Tuesday to have detained Fogle while meeting a Russian security services officer, and offering him up to $1 million a year to spy for them.

US ambassador Michael McFaul was summoned to the foreign ministry Wednesday where Russia formally protested against Fogel's activities. He declined to comment to the media on the incident.

On Friday, a Russian intelligence agency publicly identified an individual it claimed was the Moscow station chief of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) as of late 2011, in a move widely seen as a breach of protocol in the intelligence community.

--IANS/RIA Novosti

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