Update: The Brazilian judicial system opted not to wait for the Dutch to prosecute Cherkasov, and tried him in absentia in a federal court in Guarulhos, São Paulo on the charges of using false documents. He was convicted and has been sentenced to 15 years in prison. It is unclear if Brazil will seek the extradition of Cherkasov from The Netherlands so as to imprison him in Brazil.
Another Russian intelligence officer’s clandestine efforts were exposed for all the world to see – this time in Holland. The Dutch General Intelligence and Security Service (AIVD) scored a major coup with uncovering the Russian Military Intelligence Service (GRU) efforts to surreptitiously place a Russian intelligence officer into the International Criminal Court in The Hague. The GRU’s man, whose legend and laundry are being hung out to dry for the world to consume, is GRU officer Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, who was living and operating under the alias of “Viktor Muller Ferreira” – a Brazilian citizen.
The AIVD presentation of facts concerning the neutralization of Cherkasov, notes the current importance of the International Criminal Court (ICC) within the context of the Russian war crimes in Ukraine, and the fact that the ICC continues to investigate war crimes committed in Georgia during the Russian-Georgian conflict of 2008. Thus, access to the ICC via an “internship” would have provided the GRU intelligence officer (IO) with direct access to buildings, personnel, and data systems.
Cherkasov more Secret Squirrel than IO
AIVD tells us Cherkasov hails from Kaliningrad, where he was born on September 11, 1985. Bellingcat did a deep dive into Cherkasov and his Brazilian persona culled from Russian databases at their disposal and pieced together his true name travel in Russia in 2005 (age 20), 2008 (age 22-23), and 2015 (age 35). The last entry is significant as it has Cherkasov traveling from Moscow to Kaliningrad and back in the summer of 2015, which is after the first year of university in Ireland using the Brazilian Ferreira persona by Cherkasov.
AIVD recovered a document that detailed the Brazilian Ferreira persona, created circa 2010, indicative of the Ferreira persona having been in use for the past 12 years building the persona and cover legend for ultimate placement, the ICC. Indeed, the investment by Cherkasov and the GRU was not insignificant.
Bellingcat dove into open-source research and uncovered Ferriera’s social network accounts, including his Twitter and Facebook accounts. In doing so, the actions of Ferriera, beginning circa 2010 are laid bare.
Ferriera attended Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland 2014-2018. Graduating in November 2018, he went on to attend Johns Hopkins University’s School of Advanced International Studies in Baltimore, MD 2018-2020 where he obtained his Master’s degree. His area of focus? His major was in “American Foreign Policy and International Economics” with a minor in “Conflict Management”
The Bellingcat uncovered his entry at “myvisajobs” which details his academic and professional engagements (as Ferriera) from 2011.
An associate professor at Johns Hopkins University noted how he felt he had been played by the GRU via Cherkasov/Ferriera and vocalized his anger/frustration in a tweet.
I had good reasons to hate Russian security services before. Now I am just exploding. I feel angry, I feel stupid, I feel naive, I feel tired. I got played. I had him in class. Twice, in fact. One class was half-Zoom during COVID, several interactions outside classroom https://t.co/71HIC6A92d
— Eugene Finkel (@eugene_finkel) June 16, 2022
How Cherkasov switched between his alias persona and true name persona was not shared. The fact that Bellingcat was able to identify the GRU efforts at identity housecleaning once the Ferreira persona was put into play speaks to the depth of the OSINT expertise. Why the GRU had him travel to Moscow and then allowed him to travel to Kaliningrad in the summer of 2015 is a head scratcher. Add to that, Cherkasov’s needed to carry his bio legend with him to remind himself who he was, from where he hailed and his experiences and those of his ostensible family is indicative of an IO who was destined to fail to operate in anything other than his true name. This may explain the fact that AIVD picked him up and neutralized his activities early on in his GRU efforts to penetrate the ICC.
While the AIVD arrest of Cherkasov is a major counterintelligence win and the sharing of the Cherkasov/Ferreira legend educates us all, it’s not time to rest on our laurels. Counterintelligence efforts are never “complete.” This tale should be incorporated into FSO CI briefings as an example of why reporting foreign national contacts is of importance and the tenacity of the Russian intelligence services to invest long term in their efforts to penetrate their entities of interest.
