Brazilian intelligence services uncovered a network of nine undercover spies. For many years, as revealed by an investigation by The New York Times, Russia used Brazil as a launching pad for its most elite intelligence officers. In a daring and far-reaching operation, the spies shed their Russian past. They started businesses, made friends, and had romantic relationships—events that over the years became components of entirely new identities.
Brazil has not officially announced the results of its intelligence services' work. The names of the exposed Russian spies were revealed by NYT as part of a journalistic investigation. Of the nine members of the spy network, six have not yet been named.
This operation was different from others; the goal was not to spy on Brazil but to become Brazilians and move to countries more interesting to the Kremlin. Disguised with plausible stories, they traveled to the USA, Europe, or the Middle East and began working seriously. The Russians essentially turned Brazil into an assembly line for deep-cover operatives, the publication writes. One of them opened a jewelry business. Another became a blonde, blue-eyed model. A third was admitted to an American university. A Brazilian researcher found work in Norway, and a married couple eventually moved to Portugal.
The operation to dismantle the Kremlin's spy network, which Brazilian intelligence services named "East," began in April 2022. Over the past three years, Brazilian counterintelligence agents quietly and methodically tracked these spies. Thanks to the meticulous work of the police, agents discovered a pattern that allowed them to identify the spies one by one.
It all started when the CIA provided Brazil with information about a Brazilian passport holder, Victor Mueller Ferreira, who was trying to secure an internship at the International Criminal Court. His real name was Sergey Cherkasov, and he was an officer of Russian military intelligence. He was sentenced to 15 years in prison, but his term was later reduced to five years.
Studying his biography allowed Brazilian intelligence services to make a startling discovery—Cherkasov had a genuine birth certificate issued to a woman who never had children and died in the early 1990s. After that, the police began looking for similar cases—law enforcement was interested in people who had Brazilian birth certificates but suddenly appeared as adults. This analysis allowed the Russian spy network to be uncovered. According to officials, the investigation has already covered at least eight countries, and operational information is coming from the USA, Israel, the Netherlands, Uruguay, and other Western intelligence services. Another member of this network—Mikhail Mikushin—was arrested by Norwegian police in 2022. He worked as a research associate at a university, posing as a Brazilian. Two Russian operatives working under deep cover were arrested in Slovenia, where they lived under Argentine cover, in August last year; they returned to Russia as part of an exchange.
One of the first revealed agents was Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich, whose real name is Artem Shmyrev. He allegedly was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1986, but in fact, appeared out of nowhere in 2015. He spoke almost perfect Portuguese, explaining his slight accent by his childhood in Austria. He had a 3D printing business in Rio, located a block from the US consulate, as well as a girlfriend. Meanwhile, Shmyrev's real wife, Irina, another Russian spy, lived undercover in Greece. Shmyrev managed to escape, saying he was going to Malaysia, and never returned from the trip. His wife also managed to escape.
The publication notes that only two spies from the uncovered network were detained, while the others managed to escape. For example, the married couple Manuel Francisco Steinbruck Pereira and Adriana Carolina Costa Silva Pereira, who moved to Portugal in 2018 and then disappeared. Another married couple—Federico Luis Gonzalez Rodriguez and his wife Maria Isabel Moresco Garcia, who posed as a model—also managed to escape. Another Russian spy lived under the name Maria Luisa Dominguez Cardoso. She also had a Brazilian birth certificate and later obtained a Uruguayan passport. Journalists discovered and revealed their real names.
This failure of Russian intelligence services is comparable to the 2010 failure when a cell of 11 spies was uncovered in the USA.
Photo: The New York Times