A BRUSSELS-BASED NEWSPAPER has publicized the names and backgrounds of nearly two dozen Russian diplomats, who were recently expelled by the Belgian government on suspicion of espionage.
A total of
21 Russian diplomats were expelled from Belgium in April, in co-ordination with
dozens of European governments. The move was part of a broader European wave of
diplomatic expulsions of Russian diplomatic personnel, in response to the
Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Like other
governments in Europe, the Belgians carried out the expulsions of Russian
diplomats in secret, and employed a “no comment” policy in response to media
requests. Such an approach is customary when it comes to diplomatic expulsions.
It allows the government ordering the expulsions to expect a similar level of
discretion if and when its own diplomats are expelled in a possible tit-for-tat
move by an adversary. It is therefore highly unusual for information concerning
expelled diplomatic personnel to be made public. And yet that is precisely what
happened earlier this week, when the EUObserver, an English language newspaper
based in Brussels, published information about the names and backgrounds [PDF] of the 21 expelled Russian
diplomats. The paper said the information was leaked by a source, but did not
elaborate.
According
to the newspaper, all 21 expelled diplomats were men. It further alleged that
10 of them were intelligence personnel of the Main Directorate of the Russian
Armed Forces’ General Staff. A further nine diplomats worked for the Foreign
Intelligence Service (SVR, Russia’s equivalent to the United States Central
Intelligence Agency), while two were employees of the external service of the
Russian Federal Security Service (FSB). Most were in their 40s, though at least
one was in his early 60s and one was in his late 20s. The EUObserver said that
some of the information about the alleged spies was unearthed by The Dossier
Center, a British-based open-source information outlet, which is similar to
Bellingcat. The Dossier Center is funded by the oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky,
who is a critic of the Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Interestingly,
at least two of the Russian diplomats had put minimal effort into hiding their
true identities, according to the EUObserver. Aleksei Kozhevnikov, 36, who was
listed as an attaché at the Russian embassy in Brussels, had reportedly
registered his personal vehicles at 56 Volokolamskoye Shosse, Moscow. That is
the address of the 162nd Military Technical Information Center, which is a GRU
signals intelligence unit. Another expelled diplomat is George Kuznetsov, 46,
who served as Russia’s consul general in the city of Antwerp. He apparently
listed as his home address as 5 Varsonofievsky Lane, Moscow, which houses the
FSB’s Central Polytechnic. According to the newspaper, the address has been
used for years by the Kremlin to conceal the real addresses of FSB officers.
Other
expelled diplomats include a “deputy trade representative”, a “technician”, an
“electrician”, a “custodian”, and of course several “attachés”. It is
worth noting that, alongside the 21 who were expelled, the Belgian government,
in co-ordination with the European Union (EU), expelled another 19 Russian
diplomatic representatives to the EU, which is headquartered in Belgium. A
further eight Russian diplomats were expelled from Russia’s embassy to the North Atlantic
Treaty Organization in 2021. This leads to the question of how many accredited
Russian diplomats are left in Belgium. According to the EUObserver, around 100
are left, “about half” of whom are intelligence officers.
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