Former KGB official says all US citizens Putin can detain are ‘tradable assets’

• Russia imprisoning American citizens as bargaining chips is “nothing new,” said a former KGB official.
• Jack Barsky told Fox that this would give Moscow “tradable assets.”
• Ksenia Karelina, a mixed American-Russian ballerina, is the latest American to be detained by Russia.

Former KGB official Jack Barsky said all American citizens held in Russia provide the Kremlin with “tradable assets.”

Barsky, a former sleeper agent for Soviet intelligence in the 1970s and 1980s, told Fox News’ Martha McCallum on Monday that the practice of arresting Americans for this purpose is “nothing new.” Ta.

“The same thing has happened from Stalin’s time to today, because Americans in prison are a tradeable asset,” Barsky said on McCallum’s “The Story.”

Barsky, who was cooperating with the FBI and NSA after the discovery, was commenting on the detention of American-Russian ballerina Kseniya Karelina, who was arrested on February 21.

Karerina, 33, was stopped by Russian authorities while traveling from Los Angeles to Yekaterinburg on suspicion of donating to a Ukrainian organization, Russia’s Federal Services Agency said.

She said she was visiting her grandmother and her employer, Ciel Spa Beverly Hills, donated $51.80.

“What really makes me shake my head is the brutality they did to this young woman, and then coming out in public and saying 50 bucks,” Barsky said. .

Recent footage on Russian state television showed Karelina being led blindfolded and handcuffed into a detention center, where she was held behind bars.

Karelina is one of at least three other Americans known to be held in Russia.

Two of them, Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich and Marine Corps veteran Paul Whelan, have been classified as unlawfully detained by the U.S. State Department. The third person was teacher Robert Woodland Romanoff, who was arrested in January.

Barsky said that “there is nothing that is being done in this area that is not under the control of President Putin,” adding that the Russian leader hopes that by imprisoning “he will frighten more people.” He added that he believed he intended to do so.

“It will scare not only Russians and their own people, but everyone around the world,” Barsky said.

In December 2022, WNBA star Brittney Griner was released from a Russian prison in exchange for notorious arms dealer Viktor Bout, also known as the “Merchant of Death.”