Because Russian spies have been allowed to roam the Netherlands for years

• Eelco Bosch van Rosenthal

  research editors

• Ben Meindertsma

  research editors

The seventeen Russian intelligence officers expelled from the Netherlands at the end of March were spies turns out from the research of the NOS e news hour. The men’s activities included encrypting secret messages, counterintelligence and gathering technology for the Russian military.

Did the Dutch intelligence know what these men were doing? And why weren’t they expelled from our country much earlier? Below is the story of the complex relationship between the Dutch secret services and Russian spies.

There is a thin layer of snow in The Hague when Deputy Consul Roman Nefedov loads the moving van in front of his apartment in early April. He returns to Moscow with his wife and two small children. A few days earlier he was told that he is no longer welcome in the Netherlands.

According to the Dutch secret service, Nefedov works for the so-called KR line of the Russian foreign intelligence service SVR. That’s the counter-intelligence department. Nefedov collects information on Dutch and other foreign services and tries to acquire sources there. But he also keeps an eye on his compatriots: his colleagues, to make sure they are not invaded, and a few other Russians in the Netherlands.

His work at the stately consulate is primarily a cover. It is convenient for Nefedov to work in the visa service. This way he can see all visa applications and can keep an eye on who wants to travel to Russia.

He’s the only spy in the consulate. Most of her colleagues work a little further down on the vast grounds of the Russian embassy. In addition to the embassy, ​​residential buildings, a school and a tennis court, here is also the white villa of the SVR and the GRU military intelligence service.

The spies working here should seek out and approach people who work in the State Department, Defense, academia or industry in order to obtain confidential information.

The information that is gathered ends up with two colleagues working full time in the reference of the SVR: the secure room in the white mansion where information is encrypted with cryptographic equipment and sent to the Moscow office.

All colleagues are expected to have very little private contact with the Dutch. But there is an even stricter regime for this delicate position: it is not allowed to leave the embassy premises unaccompanied, for fear that they will overflow.

For years he has been a thorn in the side of the Dutch secret services: the Russians official covers – spies who can move freely in the Netherlands thanks to the diplomatic visa. But the expulsion of Nefedov and his colleagues was not an option for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs until then. If the Netherlands is such a spy Moscow should immediately do the same with a Dutch diplomat. That price is too high for the Dutch embassy in Russia, where there would be hardly any diplomats left.

And so the Dutch security services AIVD and MIVD have no choice but to try to better follow the agents of the secret services of SVR and GRU and to stop their espionage activities.

It’s not easy, because no other country has as many spies working in embassies like Russia. There are at least twenty of them, distributed in different locations in The Hague and Amsterdam. So much so that the counter-espionage teams of the Dutch intelligence cannot keep an eye on them full time. And so as many GPS trackers as possible are used and telephone conversations are intercepted.

It is a game between the Russian and Western intelligence that has been played since the Cold War. When Nefedov applied for a diplomatic visa two years ago, the AIVD and MIVD already knew that a new spy was arriving in the Netherlands. But the limit for denying entry to a Russian is high.

Only if someone is known in the foreign services as a spy with exceptional qualities, or has already been deported to another country, will they be rejected by the Dutch Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the advice of the services. This happens on average once a year, usually following a warning from a foreign sister. In all other cases, the spy simply lands at Schiphol and they can begin monitoring and interception.

That Deputy Consul Nefedov is actually a spy, the Dutch intelligence can easily determine, just like other intelligence officers. He spends some of his time doing activities that correspond to his position as vice consul. But for the rest of him, his daily routine is different from that of his consulate colleagues.

His resume is also different; he did not study at the Moscow Diplomatic Academy like most of his colleagues. Also, sitting official covers usually on a fixed ‘slot’: for example, the positions of vice consul and first secretary are covered by default by the SVR. Four employees of the commercial representation in Amsterdam are GRU officers.

Nefedov’s neighbor already thought his behavior was suspicious:

Despite the diplomatic visa, spies cannot operate in full freedom. As soon as one of them is caught by the Dutch secret services for espionage, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs is sometimes willing to deport someone. Two officers from the SVR who also visibly collect technology information for the Russian military and pay their sources for it, had to leave two years ago.

This also happened in 2018, when the GRU flew four diplomats to hack the systems of the OPCW (Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons) in The Hague. The men were hoping to gather information on the investigation into Russia. The MIVD thwarted the hacking attempt and the diplomats were expelled.

But not every time a Russian spy is caught, the intelligence services send out a press release. For example, a precarious matter with a foreign official never comes up. The AIVD discovered a few years ago that this official had been approached by a Russian spy. The security service asks the official to work with the spy to find out more about his modus operandi. The spy is eventually evicted.

And not all operations are successful. Two years ago, things went wrong when Dutch services placed a GPS tracker under Mikhail Klimuk’s car. Outwardly, he is the Russian defense attache, but he is also the head of the GRU in the Netherlands-de resident. The MIVD would like to know who its sources are in the Netherlands or abroad.

But the Russians find the tracker. Angry sends the Russian Foreign Ministry a message to the world. The cabinet or the services never acknowledged that the Netherlands was behind this action.

After the Russian invasion of Ukraine, Western intelligence services have more and more problems with the presence of Russian spies. After the raid, the services in the Netherlands also draw up a priority list of intelligence agents who would like to be expelled. For the relief of services, the State Department agrees to the expulsion of all 17 diplomats, ending a decades-long period of tolerance. How many times in all those years the Russians have managed to obtain confidential information, they know only in Moscow.

On April 10, intelligence officers, along with their wives and children, are picked up from a Russian government plane at the Belgian Zaventem airport. Back in Moscow, the wife of Nefedov’s colleague Matveev publishes a poem on a poetry site: “Airplanes, suitcases. Little sense, much drama. It’s a shame, but life won’t change.”