“The Norwegian Counterintelligence Service (PST) revealed on Friday the true identity, according to their information, of an illegal Russian agent suspected of spying for Russia by posing as a Brazilian researcher. It could be a senior Russian military intelligence officer, according to a researcher from the Bellingcat investigative site.
Admitted in the fall of 2021 as a lecturer at the Norwegian University of Tromsø in the strategic Arctic region, the individual was arrested on Monday and placed, initially, in internment for violation of the laws on the immigration, with a view to deportation. The investigation has since been widened to cover suspicions of “unlawful espionage directed against state secrets likely to harm the fundamental interests of the nation”. Facts punishable in Norway by three years in prison.