Via Guardian UK -
Russia's security service has revealed that it arrested a suspected Chinese spy who posed as a translator while seeking sensitive information on an anti-aircraft system.
The man, identified as Tun Sheniyun, was arrested on 28 October last year, the federal security service (FSB) said in a statement cited by RIA-Novosti news agency.
It was unclear why the FSB disclosed the arrest on Wednesday, less than one week before the prime minister, Vladimir Putin, travels to China on an official visit.
The alleged spy was acting "under the guise of a translator of official delegations", the statement said.
He had "attempted to obtain technological and maintenance documents on the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system from Russian citizens for money", it added. That information is a state secret, it said.
Prosecutors sent the case to court on Tuesday, the statement said. Tun faces charges of attempted espionage.
Last year, Russia delivered 15 S-300 systems to China, a popular Soviet-era arms export, as part of a deal signed several years earlier. Yet Beijing has recently turned to more modern systems.
Putin's two-day visit to China next Tuesday will be his first foreign trip since he announced his planned return to the Russian presidency next year.
Ruslan Pukhov, director of the centre for analysis of strategies and technologies, a defence thinktank in Moscow, said: "They [the Chinese] are trying to copy this system illegally. They've already copied a whole series of our weapons.
"They're trying to clone the S-300, to serve their interests and also to export. As I understand it, it's not all working out. They probably wanted extra documentation to better deal with this task of reverse engineering.
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