"The KGB has carried out a covert operation, catching a Lithuanian military intelligence resident, Citizen F. Several of his agents were detained, too, on suspicion of providing state secrets to a foreign special service," the KGB's information center told Interfax, stating that the detained persons spied for Lithuanian special services.
Lithuania's Foreign Ministry, commenting on information published on the official website of the Belorussian KGB, said the allegeations were misleading.
"The information published on the official website of the Belarusian KGB is misleading. Such insinuations published by special services of the neighboring country do no contribute to better bilateral ties," spokesman for the ministry Mindaugas Lašas told BNS.
The reports by Belorussian special services about detention of alleged spies for Lithuania should be viewed with extreme caution, says Arvydas Anušauskas, chairman of the Lithuanian parliamentary National Security and Defense Committee.
"First of all, we see from the reports that the detainees are citizens of Belarus, not Lithuania. I would view such reports by Belorussian special services with extreme caution, as they lack evidence. I think they are some actions of Belorussian special services that they attempt to include Lithuania into," Anušauskas told BNS on Thursday.
The activities by alleged spies were performed in the interest of special services of the Republic of Lithuania, Russia's news agency Interfax cited the KGB Information and Public Relations Center.
According to the press release, the operational search activities led to seizure of "electronic media, other items and materials that reveal their spying activities aimed at obtaining classified military information, including from the Union's state general security system."
Furthermore, the Information and Public Relations Center said the documents also proved facts of operations performed by a group of agents to receive information by technical means for later dispatch of data abroad.
The KGB also said the persons would face criminal charges for betrayal of their homeland, which is punishable by 7-15 years in jail.
Commenting on reports from Belarus, Juozas Kačergius, director of the Second Department of Operational Services under the Lithuanian Defense Ministry, says that military intelligence and counterintelligence usually do not comment on their operations.
"Military intelligence and counterintelligence usually do not comment of their intelligence or counterintelligence operations. The second thing is that Belarus detained its own citizens, which is very interesting. The third thing is that everybody is doing his job and I don't think something special happened here. (…) We have not made any detentions," Kačergius told BNS.
