A suspected Russian spy, who spent four years studying at Trinity College, has been arrested by Dutch authorities.
Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, who told his classmates that his name was ‘Victor Muller Ferreira’ and that he was from Brazil, graduated in 2018 with a first-class degree in political science. While in Dublin, he also worked as an English teacher and taught mathematics.
He later moved to the United States where he studied American Foreign Policy and worked as a freelance translator.
For years, he tried to get an internship at the International Criminal Court (ICC) using his fake Brazilian identity and was due to take up a position with the organization this spring.
MWCCNK THE HAGUE, HOLLAND. July 19, 2017. International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague, The Netherlands. New building by Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects.However, Western intelligence concluded that he was a Russian spy and Dutch authorities deported him to Brazil, where he is likely to face legal proceedings.
Had he been allowed to take up his post at the ICC, he would have been given access to court documents just as he began investigating Russia’s war crimes in Ukraine.
“It clearly shows us what the Russians are doing, trying to gain illegal access to information inside the ICC. We classify this as a high-level threat,” Erik Akerboom, director general of the Dutch intelligence agency.
In a series of angry tweets, one of Cherkasov’s former professors at John Hopkins said he was furious that a Kremlin agent had misled him.
“I wrote him a letter. A strong one, actually. If I. I wrote a reference letter for a GRU officer. I will never get over this fact. I hate everything about GRU, him, this story. I am very glad that it has been exposed,” Professor Eugene Finkel wrote on the microblogging platform.
Before, I had good reason to hate the Russian security services. Now I’m just blowing up. I feel angry, I feel stupid, I feel naive, I feel tired. they played me. I had it in class. Twice, in fact. One class was half Zoom during COVID, several interactions outside the classroom https://t.co/71HIC6A92d
— Eugene Finkel (@eugene_finkel) June 16, 2022
sleeper agents
Russia has cultivated a sinister network of sleeper agents around the world, many of whom spend years building false identities to infiltrate Western organizations.
Some even hide their identity from their partners and children.
In 2011, Anna Chapman was characterized as “Russia’s most glamorous secret agent” following her deportation from the United States.
PDB09T Mug shot of Anna Chapman.Chapman was one of 10 Russian sleeper agents exchanged by US authorities, and upon her return to Moscow, then-President Dmitry Medvedev honored her with a medal.
Most former sleeper agents tend to keep a low profile at home, but Chapman has since become a runway model and media star in his homeland, where he hosts a weekly television show.
Main image: Students on the Trinity College Dublin campus in March 2016. Photo by: Sergio Azenha / Alamy Stock Photo
Reference-www.newstalk.com