Dutch authorities made a surprise announcement Thursday that they had refused entry to a Russian spy posing as a Brazilian national to infiltrate the International Criminal Court. Authorities speculated that the man was seeking to gain access to information relating to the ICC’s investigations of alleged Russian war crimes.
But the trail of deceit apparently went much further back. Social media accounts belonging to the alleged spy suggest that he had studied at top academic institutions in Europe and the United States — including Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Washington, D.C., a key place of study for future foreign policy elites.
It was not clear what U.S. authorities knew about the situation and when they knew it. The FBI’s Washington Field Office said it could not confirm or deny whether there was an investigation into the individual.
The first public details of the alleged plot instead came from the General Intelligence and Security Service, the Netherlands’ counterespionage agency. The agency, which is known by its Dutch acronym, AIVD, released an extraordinary news release reminiscent of a spy novel Thursday morning.
AIVD said a 33-year-old purporting to be a Brazilian national named Viktor Muller Ferreira flew to the Netherlands from Brazil to start an internship at the ICC in The Hague — except the man’s real name was Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, and he was a 36-year-old Russian intelligence officer, according to the agency.
Cherkasov, posing as Muller Ferreira, “used a well-constructed cover identity by which he concealed all his ties with Russia in general, and the GRU [Russia’s intelligence directorate] in particular,” according to AIVD, which released copies of a document detailing the man’s elaborate cover identity.
That four-page document, apparently written by the spy himself in a bid to memorize the details of his cover story, included long descriptions of a complicated transnational family history and mundane details about rent in different cities, crushes on schoolteachers and a favorite trance music nightclub in Brasília.
The original document, probably written in mid-2010, was in Portuguese and included notable grammatical mistakes. It had been redacted by Dutch authorities to remove identifying information of people not involved in Cherkasov’s intelligence activities.
“This was a long-term, multiyear GRU operation that cost a lot of time, energy and money,” Dutch intelligence agency chief Erik Akerboom told Reuters.
Cherkasov appeared to study later at Trinity College Dublin and Johns Hopkins, according to his social media accounts.
Representatives of Johns Hopkins did not immediately respond to a request for comment, but a 2020 commencement program from the university lists a “Victor Muller Ferreira” among its graduates. He was awarded a master of arts from the School of Advanced International Studies, according to the program.
Dutch authorities briefed the court on the operation, spokesperson Sonia Robla said in an emailed statement.
“The ICC takes these threats very seriously and will continue to work and cooperate with the Netherlands,” Robla said.
Cherkasov was set to start an internship at the ICC, where Dutch intelligence said he may have sought to gain access to information about ongoing investigations into allegations of Russian war crimes committed in Ukraine and in Georgia in 2008.
“If the intelligence officer had succeeded in gaining access as an intern to the ICC, he would have been able to gather intelligence there and to look for (or recruit) sources, and arrange to have access to the ICC’s digital systems,” AIVD said.
For this reason, he was “deemed potentially very high” risk to the security of the Netherlands, and was sent back to Brazil at the earliest opportunity, the release said.
AIVD said it worked with Dutch military intelligence, or MIVD, and other partners to “mitigate any possible damage to national security and the security and integrity of international organisations.” The agency said it notified Dutch immigration authorities, as well as the ICC.
Russia has a fraught history with the court. Moscow signed the 1998 Rome Statute that established the ICC but never ratified it. The ICC has launched investigations into Russia’s invasion of South Ossetia in Georgia in 2008 and later declared Russia an occupying force in Crimea after the 2014 invasion, prompting Moscow to withdraw its signature in protest.
Just days after Russia invaded Ukraine on Feb. 24, ICC chief prosecutor Karim Khan announced that he would open an investigation into possible crimes against humanity and war crimes in Ukraine.
The accusations against a man who claimed to be a young student of human rights law and international affairs caused shock and surprise among those who knew him. One person who knew the alleged spy from Dublin said he was still processing the news, but added that “there were so many red flags.”
Eugene Finkel, an associate professor of international affairs at the university and an expert on genocide, wrote Thursday on Twitter that he had taught the man he believed to be Muller Ferreira. He even wrote him a letter of recommendation for the internship at the ICC.
“Given my research focus it made sense. I wrote him a letter. A strong one, in fact. Yes, me. I wrote a reference letter for a GRU officer. I will never get over this fact,” Finkel wrote.
Timsit reported from London and Taylor from Washington.
