Police in the Salzburg region said in a statement that "prosecutors have ordered the arrest of a 65-year-old spy handler in the Russian military intelligence service (GRU, now also known as GU) with European and international arrest warrants".

The officer was named on the Austrian interior ministry's website as 65-year-old Igor Egorovich Zaytsev.

The warrant relates to a case which came to light in November 2018 in which a retired Austrian colonel was suspected of spying for Russia for several decades.

The colonel is suspected to have begun working with Russian intelligence in the 1990s and carried on until 2018.

"The GRU handler is suspected of inducing a retired 70-year-old colonel of the Austrian army to carry out an intelligence operation to the detriment of Austria, to reveal state secrets and to deliberately give up military secrets," Austrian police said in the statement.

The statement added that the Austrian official first had contact with Russian intelligence in 1987 and that after that meeting he had "provided his handler with comprehensive information... on the Austrian armed forces, in particular on weapons systems and the formulations of land and air combat forces".

The colonel is currently in detention while investigations continue.

Police say that he initially co-operated with the investigation but more recently has stayed silent over findings from the probe.

An operational meeting between the Austrian and his handler was observed by "a foreign (intelligence) service" during which the Austrian was paid around 30,000 euros ($33,400) in cash for the information he volunteered, according to police.

Over his some 30 years working with Russian intelligence, the colonel is alleged to have amassed hundreds of thousands of euros in payments.

When the spying allegations against the colonel were initially revealed in November they led to a row between Austria and Russia, with both countries summoning each other's diplomats over the issue and then Foreign Minister Karin Kneissl cancelling a planned trip to Russia.

The affair was the latest in a string of cases where Moscow had been accused of espionage in EU states.