An Israeli diplomat in Russia has been accused of being involved in unlawful activities and has left Moscow, a Russian Foreign Ministry spokesman said Thursday.
Diplomat Shmuel Polishuk was briefly detained by authorities on Sept. 24 and left Russia, spokesman Andrei Nesterenko said, without saying the offense Polishuk was accused of.
“We hope that this regrettable incident wouldn’t affect the Russian-Israeli relations,” Nesterenko told a briefing.
Israeli Embassy spokesman Alex Goldman Shayman said the reasons for Polishuk’s departure were connected to “reasons of administrative nature.” He didn’t elaborate, but added that Russia and Israel are working to solve what he called a misunderstanding.
He said Polishuk wasn’t declared persona non grata, and he dismissed Israeli media allegations that the diplomat was expelled on espionage charges. The espionage talk “has no connection to reality,” the embassy spokesman said.
Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor also emphasized that Polishuk wasn’t expelled from Russia.
“This is an administrative matter,” he said in a statement. “It is being dealt with by both foreign ministries in good spirits and we hope the matter will be resolved quickly.”
The mass-circulation Israeli Maariv daily, reporting that Polishuk was suspected of gathering intelligence, noted that he was a representative of Nativ, a well-known Israeli government-affiiliated group that was part of the Israeli intelligence from 1951 to 2000. Its main function now is to issue immigration permits to Jews in the former Soviet Union.
Maariv described the incident as “the most serious involving Nativ personnel working in Russia in recent years.”
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