Russian state media says Moscow extracted a US citizen working for it out of Ukraine

PHOTO CAPTION: A Russian service member from the country’s special operations forces is seen during a training exercise, Feb. 3, 2015. (Russian Ministry of Defense photo via Wikimedia Commons)

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russian state media said on Monday that Moscow's forces fighting in Ukraine had successfully extracted a U.S. citizen from eastern Ukraine who had secretly helped them target Ukraine for at least two years.

State media published a picture of the purported American in civilian clothing embracing a group of what looked like Russian special forces wearing combat uniforms. His face was blurred out in the photograph.

Reuters was unable to independently confirm the Russian reports which cited Moscow's forces in the Donetsk region of eastern Ukraine as saying they were calling the American "Kenneth M."

The U.S. embassy in Moscow said it could not comment "due to privacy concerns."

Russian media cast the man as "The Quiet American" after the 1955 novel by Graham Greene which tells the story of early U.S. involvement in Vietnam through the adventures of a British journalist and an American agent.

Russian forces in the Donetsk region were quoted as saying that Russian special forces and army units had spirited the American out of eastern Ukraine and that he had been supplying Russia with "valuable intelligence" for two years.

Russian media said he had supplied information that had allowed the Russian military to "execute precision strikes against the enemy."

"The life of the rescued American is not in danger," Rusisan-backed forces in Donetsk were cited as saying. "The issue of granting political asylum and becoming a citizen of Russia is being resolved."



(Reporting by Guy Faulconbridge; Editing by Andrew Osborn)