Dozens of Russian diplomats in Northern Europe were spies – media (photo)

Many employees of Russian diplomatic missions in Northern Europe are undercover spies. This was stated in the investigation of the Finnish publication Yle, which was published on April 26.

Officially, these people are employees of embassies, but in reality they work for the Russian Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR), the Main Intelligence Directorate of the General Staff of the RF Armed Forces or the FSB. The Russian Embassy in Helsinki did not comment on Yle’s information.

“One-third of the staff of Russian embassies actually carry out intelligence duties,” the authors said.

Among the employees of the special service was a possible employee of the Foreign Intelligence Service Dmitry Otorochkin, who from 2014 to 2018 worked as the 3rd secretary at the Helsinki embassy. He later joined the Russian Embassy in Copenhagen and was expelled from Denmark in the spring of 2022.

Intelligence experts told Yle, “Intelligence officers often work in these types of roles. They are not associated with a well-defined diplomatic mission that gives freedom to intelligence activities. The most important embassy diplomats are rarely intelligence officers.”

Otorochkin has three different pages on the Russian social network VKontakte.

Journalists managed to find out that at least two Russian GRU officers left Finland last spring.

Another spy is Vladimir Komarov, 60, who worked as a consultant at the Russian Embassy in Finland until April 2022. At the beginning of his career, Komarov worked at the Russian Ministry of Economic Development.

The third GRU intelligence officer in exile is 37-year-old Dmitry Dvinyaninov. He was a mission assistant and previously worked at a Russian research institute developing space technology. His close relative was working for SVR.

Sources told Yle that Moscow is using fake names to spy on people. In the intelligence world these are called “illegal” and the SVR is responsible for them.

Scouts in Sweden

Swedish broadcaster SVT learned the names of 21 more Russian intelligence officers operating in Sweden. One of them is FSB affiliate Andrey Gurov, who uses several entrances to the Russian embassy in Stockholm.

“In 2015 and 2019 data, Russia appears as the head of the Rostov regional department of the FSB,” the investigation says.

And Dmitry Abdulin, originally from Volgograd, has been in charge of encryption issues at the Russian Embassy in Stockholm since 2019, but was actually an officer of the Foreign Intelligence Service. The lookout is registered with military unit 70855 in Moscow.

There are also scouts who are not listed as career diplomats. Nikolai Banatov was registered at the embassy and enjoyed diplomatic immunity. Two Western intelligence sources have confirmed that he works for Russian military intelligence.

Banatov was the attaché of the trade delegation of the Russian Embassy in Serbia in 2015.

“Man of Russia” in Svalbard

Norwegian channel NRK told the story of 38 Russian intelligence agents working in embassies of Scandinavian countries. Investigators noted that Andrei Chemerilo, the Russian Consul General in Barentsburg, may have been linked to the GRU.

In July last year, Chemerilo took up the post of Consul General in Barentsburg and before that he was a diplomat in Oslo and Stockholm.

Chemerilo lived at the address of the GRU training center, but denies any connection to Russian intelligence.

Most of these 38 diplomats have left their host countries, but at least 13 are still working. Timur Chekanov, spokesman of the Russian Embassy in Oslo, noted that the Barentsburg Consul General is carrying out normal diplomatic and consular work.

Three deputies of the military attaché of the Russian Federation were expelled from Denmark

The activities of almost the same people were also noticed in Denmark. DR journalists write that Russian intelligence officials gather resources, attend conferences and hold meetings with prominent Danish politicians, researchers and businessmen.

DR also mentions Otorochkin, 35, who arrived in Denmark in late summer 2021 and joined the Russian diplomatic corps.

Danish counterintelligence chief Anders Henriksen said the Russians were spying on the country’s political space.

“They monitor our negotiating position on foreign and security policy and try to influence the political process. They pose a serious threat to the state and our national sovereignty.”

Three diplomats expelled from Denmark, Alexander Toslunov, Alexey Ropot and Sergey Maslov, worked as deputy military attachés at the embassy in Copenhagen. Second, Maslov, 44, arrived in Denmark in the fall of 2019 and has been involved in information gathering, robotics and cyber threats.

Sources told DR that Sergei Maslov’s wife was registered in Moscow at an address that turned out to be a hostel for GRU officers.

Recall that The Economist publication found ways to finance Russian spies by mafia groups. Journalists noted that the large-scale invasion of the Russian Federation into Ukraine divided many criminal units.

The VSQUARE investigation team talked about placing antennas on the roofs of Russian embassies in 11 European cities to capture and listen to signals.