The chief of Russia’s federal security service FSB, Nikolai Patrushev said his service has repeatedly encountered with “attempts at active operations by the secret services of leading countries in Russia,” Itar-Tass news agency reported Friday.

Patrushev said one of the main directions was to use the newly-acquired NATO partners to gather intelligence information encompassing a wide range of themes — the line-up of political forces in Russia, relations between the central authorities and regions, bodies of power, business structures, and science, defense industry and armed forces development prospects.

According to Patrushev about 50 foreign secret services agents were discovered by FSB in 2005-2006.

A number of Russian citizens have been accused and convicted over spying recently, Skripal, for passing secret information over to the British intelligence, Norik, for an attempt to hand over classified information to the Chinese intelligence, and Dumenkov, for gathering defense-related materials for Germany.

Patrushev has also commented on Khitryuk`s case. Khitryuk, a penitentiary system lieutenant-colonel in the Kaliningrad Region is suspected of spying for Lithuania. “It is hard to imagine the Lithuanian secret services these days act only in the interests of their own country, whose priorities are now determined by NATO policies,” Patrushev said.

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