From RIA Novosti: Russian security service personnel may return to Ukraine’s Crimea in the near future as part of a reset in relations between the two former Soviet republics, a business daily said on Wednesday.

Ukraine ordered 19 Federal Security Service (FSB) officers to leave Crimea’s Sevastopol, where Russia’s Black Sea fleet is based, late last year. …

Kommersant said that an agreement to bring the Russian officers back to the base could be signed at a May 19-20 meeting between the heads of the two countries’ security services in Ukraine’s Odessa. The FSB officers could return within a month of the signing, the paper said.

The move would come as part of a wider cooperation deal between the two security services, the paper said, citing officials at the Russia and Ukrainian foreign ministries.

"Russia raised the issue of the return of the FSB officers to the Black Sea fleet base almost immediately after Viktor Yanukovych’s election victory," a Ukrainian diplomat was quoted by the paper as saying.

In another sign of the warmer relations between the two countries, the paper said that a Russian FSB officer detained in Odessa in January of suspicion of espionage could soon be freed.  (photo: Reuters)

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