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Here is what we know about the Russian spies in The Netherlands
At least twenty Russian official covers - spies in diplomatic services - were still active in The Netherlands at the beginning of this year. Seventeen of them were deported in March. Unlike ordinary diplomats, the intelligence officers are hardly traceable on the Internet. They are not active on social media or stopped being active years ago. Several of their spouses can, however, be found online. Thanks to them, we know a little bit more about the lives of these official covers.
We also talked to sources in the intelligence world and submitted the list to the Dossier Center. The Center is an organization financed by Mikhail Khodorkovski, a Russian businessman in exile, with access to databases containing information leaked earlier about the training and background of Russian intelligence officers.
This is what we know.
Their business cards state that they work as attachés or secretaries with the Russian Embassy or the Consulate in The Hague or the commercial representation in Amsterdam. But their real employer is the GRU, the military intelligence service, or the SVR, the foreign intelligence service (one of the successors of the KGB).
Both agencies have more or less the same goal: collecting relevant political, economic or military intelligence. Most of them are expected to go out there and recruit sources. What they do, is kept secret from the regular Embassy staff, as well as from the employees of the other agency. Some of them do full-time spy work, while others have diplomatic duties as well.
Young attachés Kirill Matveev (30) and Aleksey Druzhin (33) held two of the most important positions within the Embassy. They worked in the referentura, the secured room at the villa on the Embassy premises, where they and their superior Sergey Pyatnitskiy (52) were among the few who had access. They were SVR encryption experts: they used encryption hardware to encrypt secret messages, send them to the SVR head office in Moscow, and decode the messages coming in from Moscow. The GRU had its own referentura at the villa, staffed by the attaché Oleg Korotkov (53).
These men were the only ones who had access to the keys necessary to encode messages. They saw everything that came in or went out. The work they did was so sensitive that encryption experts were not allowed to leave the Embassy premises unaccompanied, for fear that something might happen to them, or that they might come into contact with Western agencies.
According to the Dossier Center, Aleksey Druzhin is the son of a public servant. His father occupies a leading position in ICT at the Kremlin. Aleksey Druzhin himself completed his studies at the Moscow Aviation Institute, an institute where, according to the Dossier Center, more intelligence officers have studied.
According to sources in intelligence, Sergey Pyatnitskiy, the head of the referentura, was at the top of the list to be deported, followed by the other encryption experts. With encryption experts being deported from many Western European countries, it has become much more difficult for the SVR in Moscow to communicate with the spies who are still here - or so intelligence agencies in Western Europe think.
The fact that Pyatnitskiy is a spy was probably not very difficult to find out for the agencies. According to the Dossier Center, he is registered in Moscow at an address where, even during the Cold War, officers of the First Directorate of the KGB (now the SVR) used to live.
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Here is what we know about the Russian spies in The Netherlands
At least twenty Russian official covers - spies in diplomatic services - were still active in The Netherlands at the beginning of this year. Seventeen of them were deported in March. Unlike ordinary diplomats, the intelligence officers are hardly traceable on the Internet. They are not active on social media or stopped being active years ago. Several of their spouses can, however, be found online. Thanks to them, we know a little bit more about the lives of these official covers.
We also talked to sources in the intelligence world and submitted the list to the Dossier Center. The Center is an organization financed by Mikhail Khodorkovski, a Russian businessman in exile, with access to databases containing information leaked earlier about the training and background of Russian intelligence officers.
This is what we know.
Their business cards state that they work as attachés or secretaries with the Russian Embassy or the Consulate in The Hague or the commercial representation in Amsterdam. But their real employer is the GRU, the military intelligence service, or the SVR, the foreign intelligence service (one of the successors of the KGB).
Both agencies have more or less the same goal: collecting relevant political, economic or military intelligence. Most of them are expected to go out there and recruit sources. What they do, is kept secret from the regular Embassy staff, as well as from the employees of the other agency. Some of them do full-time spy work, while others have diplomatic duties as well.
NOS
Korotov, Druzhin and Matveev
Young attachés Kirill Matveev (30) and Aleksey Druzhin (33) held two of the most important positions within the Embassy. They worked in the referentura, the secured room at the villa on the Embassy premises, where they and their superior Sergey Pyatnitskiy (52) were among the few who had access. They were SVR encryption experts: they used encryption hardware to encrypt secret messages, send them to the SVR head office in Moscow, and decode the messages coming in from Moscow. The GRU had its own referentura at the villa, staffed by the attaché Oleg Korotkov (53).
These men were the only ones who had access to the keys necessary to encode messages. They saw everything that came in or went out. The work they did was so sensitive that encryption experts were not allowed to leave the Embassy premises unaccompanied, for fear that something might happen to them, or that they might come into contact with Western agencies.
According to the Dossier Center, Aleksey Druzhin is the son of a public servant. His father occupies a leading position in ICT at the Kremlin. Aleksey Druzhin himself completed his studies at the Moscow Aviation Institute, an institute where, according to the Dossier Center, more intelligence officers have studied.
According to sources in intelligence, Sergey Pyatnitskiy, the head of the referentura, was at the top of the list to be deported, followed by the other encryption experts. With encryption experts being deported from many Western European countries, it has become much more difficult for the SVR in Moscow to communicate with the spies who are still here - or so intelligence agencies in Western Europe think.
The fact that Pyatnitskiy is a spy was probably not very difficult to find out for the agencies. According to the Dossier Center, he is registered in Moscow at an address where, even during the Cold War, officers of the First Directorate of the KGB (now the SVR) used to live.
NOS
Nefedov, Frolov, and unknown SVR-officer
The Vice Consul Roman Nefedov (34) and his wife and two small children lived at a stone's-throw from the Embassy. Just as the first secretary Aleksey Frolov (34), he has come from directorate VKR of the SVR. The KR-line is the department of counterintelligence. Nefedov's and Frolov's duties were to keep an eye on the Dutch intelligence services and, where possible, to recruit sources within those agencies. They also made sure that the other diplomats, including their GRU and SVR colleagues, remained true to the Moscow regime, and they monitored certain Russians in The Netherlands.
Part of Nefedov's email address, which was linked to his Vkontakte profile, may already reveal his background: 'psyopworld@..', or: psychological operations. His job at the Consulate served him well: it gave him access to every visa application for Russia. The position of Vice Consul has most likely been filled by an SVR officer for years. The SVR and the GRU work with slot positions: they agree with the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs that certain positions surrounding the Embassy must always be filled by someone within their agency.
As first secretary, Frolov also had to perform ceremonial duties for the Embassy. For example, he can be seen in photographs at an award presentation at the Embassy or visiting the Zaans Museum. The Netherlands may not have been his first post. Social media pictures of his wife show the couple in China, Thailand, Pakistan, and the United Arab Emirates.
The head of the K-line in The Netherlands, the unknown man to the right in the picture, has not been deported. In the picture, we can see him accompanying his colleagues as they depart from Zaventem Airport in Brussels. As head of counterintelligence, he is in charge of security of the Embassy in The Netherlands as well. According to sources in intelligence, it was feared that his deportation would lead to deportation of the Dutch head of security in Moscow. The rezident, the head of the SVR in The Netherlands, has not been deported either. We do not know who he is. He was allowed to stay in The Netherlands, because he is the official point of contact for the SVR in this country.
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