Norway to expel 15 Russian envoys accused of spying

Latest in a string of expulsions illustrates growing threat of espionage on European soil.

Anniken Huitfeldt announces the expulsions in Oslo on Thursday. Picture: AFP

Norway will expel 15 Russian diplomats for conducting intelligence activities under diplomatic cover, an unprecedented move for the Scandinavian nation that illustrates the growing espionage threat in Europe in the wake of the war in Ukraine.

The diplomats, working out of the Russian embassy in Oslo, would be expelled shortly for conducting “activities that are incompatible with their diplomatic status”, Norwegian Foreign Minister Anniken Huitfeldt said on Thursday.

“Russia currently poses the greatest intelligence threat to Norway. We take this very seriously, and are now implementing measures to counter Russian intelligence activities in our country.

“We want Russia to continue to have a functioning diplomatic mission in Norway, but we will not accept that diplomatic missions are misused for the purposes of carrying out covert intelligence activities.”

Russia’s foreign ministry said Thursday that it would give an “appropriate response” to Norway’s expulsion of its diplomats, state news agency TASS reported. Last year, Norway expelled three Russian diplomats on similar charges, which Russia responded to by expelling three Norwegian diplomats.

Norway said it sought to maintain diplomatic relations with Russia, yet the mass expulsion is set to strain ties between the two countries, which share a 190km land border and a maritime boundary in the Arctic. Norway’s frontier with Russia was, until Finland’s ­recent accession to NATO, the only operational land border from Russia into a NATO state. Norway plays a crucial role in the alliance’s defence of Europe as a listening post in the north.

Northern European security officials warn that the war in Ukraine has raised the threat of Russian espionage, cyber attacks and hybrid warfare.

Norway’s move on Thursday is the latest alleged exposure of Russian spies on European soil. Last month, Poland charged six foreign citizens with spying for Russia and preparing acts of sabotage, and for trying to disrupt military and aid supplies to Ukraine. Slovenian authorities in January arrested two foreign nationals who had ­allegedly lived for years as so-called illegals in the capital Ljubljana, accusing them of spying.

The same month, German authorities made the second arrest in a month of an employee of the country’s foreign intelligence service suspected of passing highly sensitive information to Russian intelligence services.

The US last month made public an indictment of an alleged operative of Russia’s GRU military intelligence agency who was accused of posing as a Brazilian citizen for years in an attempt to infiltrate the International Criminal Court in The Hague, which has issued a war crimes indictment against Russian President Vladimir Putin.

The alleged operative, Sergey Cherkasov, was charged in a federal district court in Washington DC with acting as an agent of a foreign power, visa fraud, bank fraud, wire fraud. Cherkasov is serving 15 years jail in Brazil for falsely ­obtaining and using documents.

Norway’s latest expulsion order adds to the country’s tensions with Moscow, which have been growing since last year. Days before its ­invasion of Ukraine last year, Russia conducted an exercise involving submarine-borne ballistic missiles that can carry nuclear warheads in the Barents Sea, in an area stretching into Norway’s economic zone. Last June a number of Norwegian private and public institutions were targeted in a cyber attack by a pro-Russian criminal group, according to Norway’s national security authority, NSM.

The tensions have also had an economic impact. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, Norway announced that its $US1.3 trillion sovereign-wealth fund, the largest in the world, would divest itself of its Russian assets.

The Wall Street Journal