WASHINGTON (Sputnik) — The Russian Federal Drug Control Service (FSKN) through cooperation with the US Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) helped the United States dismantle the American branch of a transnational criminal drug syndicate, the agency said in a press release.
"Representatives of the Federal Drug Control Service of Russia handed over to [DEA] officers operational materials… [for] over one thousand drug dealers [operating in the United States] when conducting a large-scale counter-narcotics operation Mozaika (Mosaic) aimed to dismantle a transnational criminal drug syndicate," the FSKN stated in a release on Friday.
Operation Mosaic was launched in the summer of 2015 to dismantle a transnational criminal syndicate comprised of 10,000 drug dealers operating in 47 countries.
Despite the severed US-Russian counter-narcotics cooperation, the FSKN praised the cooperation that is "gradually developing" with the DEA.
"This allowed [us] to dismantle the American segment of the organization," FSKN noted.
In 2014, the United States unilaterally suspended cooperation across 21 level working groups, including the Russian-American Counternarcotics Working Group established in 2009 at the presidential level.
The Russian government has stated its desire to continue counter-narcotics cooperation with US partners.
