A group of Russians and Americans smuggled millions of dollars worth of military and other sensitive equipment into New Hampshire and elsewhere in the country to evade U.S. sanctions, federal officials said Tuesday.
The technology includes ammunition for sniper rifles and electronic weapons with nuclear or hypersonic — faster than the speed of sound — weapons, officials said.
Alexey Bryman, a US permanent resident of Merrimack, New Hampshire, was arrested along with Vadim Yermolenko of New Jersey, the US Department of Justice announced. Suspected Russian spy Vadim Konoshchenok has been arrested in the Balkan country of Estonia, where authorities have seized 375 pounds. Four other people have also been charged in Russia over the US shooting.
Bryman’s home “was a frequent transit point for goods illegally shipped from the United States to Russia,” prosecutors wrote in the indictment. He and Yermolenko altered or destroyed documents when shipping the equipment out of the country.
In a statement, Attorney General Merrick Garland said, “The Department of Justice and our international partners will not tolerate Russia’s criminal methods of military warfare.”
The Kremlin’s top officials have announced that they will withdraw from Kherson in southern Ukraine
It was not immediately known whether the detainees had lawyers available to speak to them.
Bryman and his wife run a craft store on Etsy, The Boston Globe reported. Breman’s wife, who has not been charged, told newspaper reporters she was unaware of any wrongdoing but needed to speak to her attorney.
The scheme, disclosed by federal authorities, involved a pair of companies based in Moscow and run by Russian intelligence services, which were sanctioned after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and a network of shell companies across the country.
Among the items smuggled through Bremen was a military-grade spectrum analyzer with battlefield and counter-surveillance capabilities, prosecutors said. When it eventually arrived in Russia and it didn’t work, one of the people accused of the alleged scheme emailed a complaint to the American company, and when the company’s representative saw the device sanctioned, the Russian said, “I bought this part from you, not as myself, but as an American company with a US shipping address.”
Weapons and ammunition could be critical to the fight in Ukraine, U.S. officials and military analysts told NBC News on Tuesday. Hampered by international sanctions, Russia is using old ammunition and Ukraine is focusing on its allies.
“How deep can Ukrainian fans dig and continue to support at the current level? And then how well can their defense industrial base on the Russian side work? ” said Dara Massicot, senior policy researcher at the Rand Corporation.
