Revealed: Who were Russia’s spies in the EU corridors?

An IT expert who whipped up anti-EU hatred, a brilliant Orientalist, a woman called “the pride” of Dagestan, and chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons specialists — the profiles of 19 more ‘diplomats’ expelled from Belgium in April for espionage show what Russia’s embassy to the EU has really been up to.

Arseny Nedyak, a 44-year old “counsellor” at Russia’s EU embassy, might have been known to his EU acquaintances for his famous grandfather — Leonid Nedyak, a Soviet-era navy minister.

But what they didn’t know was that Nedyak Jr. was actually a lieutenant colonel in Russia’s SVR foreign intelligence service and a communications specialist who previously worked in Russian IT giants, such as Sistema Group and IBS Group Holding, and whose task in Brussels was to orchestrate anti-EU and anti-Ukraine propaganda.

Nedyak “while at the EU mission, supervised the pro-Kremlin Russia Today, Sputnik, and bloggers broadcasting to European audiences”, a source at Ria Novosti, a Russian state media, told the Dossier Center, a London-based NGO which hunts Russian spies in Europe.

The Russian spy expulsions came in reaction to atrocities in Ukraine.

And, in an ironic twist, had Nedyak Sr. been alive today, he might himself have become a target of his grandson’s propaganda as an enemy sympathiser.

The navy minister used to live in Mariupol, in today’s Ukraine, and once organised exports from the Azovstal steel plant, which became infamous this year after Russia’s bombardment of civilians there.