A humble “trade representative” with top-level Kremlin access, a “consul general” linked to Russia’s largest spy service, and a “technician” with a background in wiretapping — the identities of 21 Russian diplomats kicked out by Belgium in April help tell the story of how Moscow made Brussels the ‘spy capital’ of Europe.
The expulsions, from Russia’s embassies and consulates to “the Kingdom of Belgium” (the constitutional monarchy’s official name), were just part of a much wider reaction to the horrors in Ukraine, which saw EU states eject hundreds of Russian diplomats in total on grounds of espionage.
The most senior spy Belgium booted out was 46-year old Alexei Kuksov, a “deputy trade representative”, who hailed from an elite unit in Russia’s GRU military intelligence service.
After graduating from a military academy in 2001, Kuksov went to serve in the GRU’s 5476 unit, according to documents unearthed by The Dossier Center — a London-based NGO funded by Russian oligarch-turned-dissident Mikhail Khodorkovsky, which hunts Russian spies in Europe.
And four years later the GRU transformed unit 5476 into its Foreign Military Capabilities Research Centre, whose staff gather intelligence on foreign armies and whose reports have direct lines to GRU head Igor Kostyukov and Russian president Vladimir Putin’s closest national security advisor, Nikolai Patrushev.
Russia’s consul general in Antwerp, 44-year old George Kuznetsov (also expelled) is a former employee of the United Aircraft Consortium in St Petersburg, who joined the Russian foreign ministry in 2001.
But at some point, he also appears to have joined Russia’s domestic intelligence service, the FSB (its largest by far), whose 5th Service also does foreign espionage.
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Andrew Rettman