Researcher from Brazil arrested in Norway. Police believe he is a Russian spy who was given a false identity

The Norwegian Police Security Service (PST) has charged a Brazilian citizen named Jose Assis Giammaria with espionage, NRK reports.

According to PST, this person is actually Russian citizen Mikhail Valerievich Mikushin, born in 1978 and working for one of the Russian special services.

The man denies this and calls himself Brazilian (however, according to PST, he answered in court in English, despite the presence of a Portuguese interpreter). He was arrested on October 24 and is currently under arrest.

The defendant came to Norway in the fall of 2021 as a visiting researcher at a university in the northern city of Tromsø. He joined a team that was also researching hybrid threats. His supervisor said he was interested in "security issues in the north."

Bellingcat investigative journalist Hristo Grozev believes that the accused works for the GRU, Russia's military intelligence agency. According to Grozev, Mikushin is registered in Moscow at an address believed to be the GRU's dormitory. "Which means that his rank is no lower than colonel!" Grozev wrote.

In addition, according to Grozev, Mikushin recently traveled to Canada, and has also visited Russia several times in recent years and has unpaid property taxes there.

• In June 2022, Dutch intelligence announced the exposure of a GRU agent who had taken up employment at the International Criminal Court in The Hague under the guise of a Brazilian citizen. The man was denied entry to the Netherlands and sent back to Brazil, where he is to stand trial for using forged documents.
• In August 2022, Bellingcat, along with The Insider , Der Spiegel, and La Repubblica , published an investigation into a GRU agent who lived in Europe for nearly 10 years and communicated with NATO officers, posing as a native of Peru. She returned to Russia in 2018.