US made attempt to recruit Russian diplomat on January 14

US intelligence services undertook another attempt at recruiting a Russian diplomat on January 14, just a week before President Barack Obama's departure from the White House, the Russian Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, said Wednesday, Sputnik reports.

On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov gave a press conference summarizing past year's events during which he noted a rise in US attempts to recruit Russian diplomats, including an April 2016 incident involving a minister counsellor of the Russian Embassy in Washington.

"What Sergei Lavrov has described was a small part of what we have seen. One of the latest recruiting attempts took place on January 14. So imagine, the [Obama] team is about to leave, it has to busy itself with transferring the administration to the new president and the new team, but despite this, it has been ramping up every means used against Russia," Zakharova said as broadcast by the Rossiya-1 TV channel.