Norway lives paranoia after case of alleged Russian spy posing as a Brazilian

When you think about it, several details about José Giammaria didn’t make sense.

To begin with, the guest researcher from the University of Trömso in the Norwegian Arctic Circle was ostensibly Brazilian but did not speak Portuguese. Furthermore, he not only paid for his own trip, a rarity in academia, but he intended to extend it. He never spoke about the work he was doing, but he was always very helpful, even offering to redesign the page of the Center for Peace Studies, where he worked.

That was until Oct. 24, when police arrived with a search warrant at his office. Days later, they announced his arrest, naming him as the Russian spy Mikhail Mikushin. “The discovery left everyone on campus on edge; I myself began to see spies everywhere”, says Marcela Douglas, director of the center.

Not only her, but Norway and much of Europe as well. With the Ukraine War dragging on, with no end in sight, and Moscow increasingly isolated, the continent’s nations are growing suspicious that the Kremlin, in desperation, is exploiting society’s openness to deepen attempts at espionage, sabotage and infiltration—perhaps to send a message, perhaps to see how far it can go in the event of a broader conflict with the West.

In addition to Mikushin, two other Russians were recently detained on suspicion of being “illegal” — spies who insert themselves into a local community for long-term espionage or recruitment. In June, a trainee at the International War Crimes Tribunal, also with a Brazilian passport, was arrested in The Hague accused of spying for Moscow. In late November, a couple was caught in a Swedish raid.

Other suspicious incidents have surfaced in several countries: German authorities suspect that drones seen flying over military bases where members of the Ukrainian forces train are Russian intelligence; a cut of undersea cables in France, while not having a malicious purpose, aroused suspicion. And an attack on fuel distribution networks in Belgium and Germany, days before the invasion, also set many on edge.

Not all point unequivocally to the Kremlin, and in many places it has become difficult to know what is heightened surveillance, what is the real cause for concern, and what is just paranoia. For Russia, the string of recent arrests in Norway, almost all of Russian citizens flying drones, is a form of hysteria.

But perhaps she has more to worry about than most. Now that Western sanctions have virtually stopped Russian fuel delivery to the continent, Norway has become the main supplier of oil and gas. On its Arctic coast there are essential submarine cables for the functioning of the internet that feeds the financial center of London and the transmission of satellite images from the far north, on the border of just under 200 kilometers with Russia, which faces the US, on the other side of the Atlantic.

That vital role has become all the more vulnerable since September, when several explosions ripped through the Nord Stream gas pipeline between Russia and Germany, an incident for which Moscow and Washington blame each other.

“It was a jolt that woke us up to the fact that the war is not just being fought in Ukraine; it’s also affecting all of us, even if it’s hard to pinpoint those responsible,” says Tom Roseth, a professor at Norwegian Defense University College.

In recent years, several Russian spies in the most conventional molds have been identified and expelled, perhaps with this making Russia invest more in undercover agents, especially with the prolongation of the conflict in Ukraine.

“The recent spike in cases makes Russia’s dependence on this type of tactic clear. In Moscow, the pressure is great, and its European network needs to show results”, says Rpseth. “While these activities have been going on forever, agents are now taking even greater risks.”

In the case of Norway, unease has started to mount since a military-grade drone was spotted over a North Sea oil rig in September. After that, several more were detected over refineries and a power plant. In October, the airport in Bergen, close to the country’s largest naval base, was closed for two hours due to the observation of drones in the region.

With that, the Norwegians began to question other cases from the beginning of the year, such as the submarine cable damaged in January and the damaged reservoir near military installations, in Trömso. What if it wasn’t accidents or vandalism, but sabotage by the Russians?

“Attacks like this can be as useful as the surveillance on the drilling rigs. We don’t know exactly who is responsible, but now they know we know it could have been someone’s work,” says regional police inspector Ole Johan Skogmo.

Citizens dutifully heeded warning notices, flooding police stations with calls about drone overflights or suspicious behavior by foreigners; however, there are those who claim that excessive zeal went too far, especially in an obscure field such as suspected espionage.

On a recent afternoon, in the near-total darkness of the Arctic winter, the Trömso forum was the scene of two trials of Russian citizens, indicted for piloting drones. None was accused of espionage, as the activity is difficult to prove, but of violation of European sanctions that prohibit Russians from controlling aircraft – thanks to the change in the interpretation of local legislation.

Seven were arrested in October and four went on trial; of these, two were convicted and forced to serve sentences ranging from two to four months. Among them, Andrei Iakunin, son of Vladimir Iakunin, a longtime ally of Vladimir Putin, whose case was closely followed by the country.

A businessman with British citizenship and living in the UK, he distanced himself from the Russian invasion but was arrested after his yacht, the Firebird, was stopped by authorities, who wanted to know if he had a drone. Andrei showed the equipment used to make images of himself and his team skiing and fishing. The prosecution asks for four months in prison. “I’m not a spy, even though I have the entire collection of 007 films”, he joked in an interview after the start of the trial, on the last day 3.

In another room, away from the cameras, engineer Aleksei Reznitchenko, moved, justified himself in a much more discreet judgment. The Russian was arrested after recording footage of several fences and the parking lot of the control tower at Trömso airport. “It was more intuition. I got suspicious and called the police because I found it very strange”, says Ivar Helsing Schrön, director of air control.

Reznitchenko was caught with photos of a military helicopter and nearby Kirkenes airport, but he explained it by saying it was his hobby. As none of the images can be considered illegal, the Russian was then accused of piloting the drone. Both prosecutors and defense attorneys admit that this type of case falls into murky legal terrain that challenges democratic values.

The Mikushin case has sparked a tussle among security analysts and academics: What level of strictness should be applied to monitoring? Is it necessary to restrict foreign researchers? International cooperation?

This would have disastrous consequences for important fields of research. In the drone cases, both Iakunin’s lawyers and those of other defendants argue that punishing Russians for their nationality is discrimination, with the potential to violate human rights. “It’s unclear to what extent this is the law, but if it’s just a matter of semantics to cover up the real purpose, then the legislation is problematic,” explains John Christian Elden, head of Iakunin’s legal counsel.

The country itself does not seem to know how to deal with the situation. The judges in the Iakunin and Reznitchenko cases opted for acquittal, but the prosecution appealed both. The first will return to the Trömso court in January. Ola Larsen, Reznitchenko’s lawyer, said that Justice has been acting more aggressively, as if it wanted to prove something. “Politics are weighing on here. They want to send a message to the Russians.”

People like Schrön insist that caution never hurts. Watching the news in his tower, just a few kilometers from the courthouse, he confesses to not feeling guilty about sending a man to trial. “No doubt the spies are very interested in the Arctic; one would have to be very naive to believe otherwise.”