Lithuania Charges Second Alleged Belarus Spy in a Month

Lithuanian prosecutors on Wednesday charged a military medic with spying for neighboring Belarus, in the second espionage case involving the Russian ally in less than a month.

"The suspect accused of espionage worked for the Belarusian secret service," state prosecutor Raimondas Petrauskas told reporters.

The allegations by NATO member Lithuania come amid the worst East-West tensions since the Cold War because of the crisis in Ukraine, where Russia is accused of fomenting a pro-Moscow separatist rebellion.

Identified only by the initials AO for legal reasons, the military medic is alleged to have handed over information about "the armed forces, personnel, plans and buildings" to Minsk over five years.

The suspect -- who was born in 1986 and joined the army in 2007 -- caused "immense" damage, according to Petrauskas.

On November 10, Lithuanian prosecutors charged a former employee of a state-owned air traffic control company of spying for Belarus.

They said they could not rule out the involvement of Lithuania's Soviet-era master Russia in the case.

A nation of three million people, Lithuania broke free from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1990 before joining NATO and the European Union in 2004.

NATO stepped up its presence in the Baltic states after Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine in March, fearing Russia may try to destabilize the region.

Belarusian authoritarian leader Alexander Lukashenko criticized the Crimea seizure but also agreed to host a Russian air base as early as next year.