MOSCOW, June 9. /TASS/. The attorney of Paul Whelan, a US national convicted of espionage in Russia, is making assumptions regarding his fate, this issue is not on the agenda of the upcoming Russia-US summit, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Ryabkov told reporters during the Primakov Readings forum, commenting on the attorney’s statement, which said that Whelan hopes Russian President Vladimir Putin will allow him to leave Russia.

"These are some speculative approaches tied to the work of attorneys," the diplomat said. "We have no grounds to say that something is in the works in the context of the summit or outside of it. In any case, the information backdrop of the upcoming summit includes reports that have little to do with reality. This is unfortunate."

Earlier on Wednesday, attorney Olga Karlova stated that her client Whelan hopes that Russia will hand him over to the US to serve the rest of his sentence there. She added that they hope that this issue will be discussed during the Putin-Biden summit.

US citizen Paul Whelan, who also holds British, Canadian, and Irish passports, was sentenced to 16 years behind bars in Russia for espionage under Article 276 of the Russian Criminal Code (Espionage). The Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) earlier said Whelan had been detained on December 28, 2018, in Moscow while on an alleged spy mission.