A former member of a US Army special unit has been sentenced to 15 years and eight months in prison for years of espionage for Russia. The Justice Department in Washington said on Friday that a court in the US state of Virginia made this judgment. The 46-year-old Peter Debbins pleaded guilty in November. The ex-soldier, who was stationed in Germany, among other places, had passed military secrets on to Russia.
Debbins was born in the United States to a Russian woman. Before joining the US Army, he made contact with Moscow in 1996. The following year, according to the US Department of Justice, Debbins was given an alias by Russian intelligence agents and signed a document in which he admitted “that he would serve Russia”.
Debbins first served with the US ground forces, but Russian intelligence encouraged him to join the Green Berets special unit. In the elite troop he rose to captain.
All the years during his service in the army, Debbins kept Russia informed with information about its units, the US Department of Justice said in a statement. Even after he retired from active military service in 2008, he continued to provide Russia with confidential information about past activities of the Green Berets and his former comrades so that the Russian secret service could try to recruit them as well.
Debbins was stationed in Germany and then in Azerbaijan and had a very high security clearance. Debbins’ last documented contact with Russia was in 2011.
The US Deputy Attorney General, John Demers, responsible for national security, emphasized in the statement that Debbins had broken his oath, “betrayed the special unit and endangered the security of our country”. His activities showed “the threat that Russian intelligence poses to our soldiers”. Relations between the US and Russia are currently very tense.
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