Ukrainian citizen Mykyta Panasenko, who was recently detained in the U.S. with improvised explosive devices, went to the U.S. in 2002 to study at a college on his own and had no relation to a government student exchange program, Ukrainian Education and Science Minister Dmytro Tabachnyk has said.

"He studied at the University of California from 2003 to 2007, where he got his bachelor's degree, and then he completed a master's program at another university in 2010," Tabachnyk said in an interview with Interfax-Ukraine on Friday.

Since 2010, Panasenko has worked at a firm producing software for casinos, he said.

Tabachnyk refused to reply what school Panasenko graduated from in Ukraine, referring to the personal data protection law.

The Inter television channel reported earlier that a Ukrainian attempting to board a train with explosives was detained in New Jersey.

Inter identified the suspect as Mykyta Panasenko, a Kyiv native, who studied in the U.S. The 27-year-old Ukrainian was arrested at the Hoboken railway station in New Jersey earlier, but police did not make this fact public.

Police said Panasenko had two home-made bombs on himself. Nothing was reported about his motives.