Russians recruit Norwegians for military and sabotage operations in Northern Europe

The Russian Geographical Society (RGS) is trying to recruit Norwegians to collect information about local military bases and energy infrastructure facilities. This fact confirms our earlier conclusions about possible preparation of attacks on Norway’s energy infrastructure. Despite this activity, the Geographical Society could avoid the sanctions lists.

RGS, the recruitment guise, is not sanctioned either by EU or US. Its chairman is Sergei Shoigu, the Russian Minister of Defense; its board of trustees is headed by President Vladimir Putin. Since the times of the Russian Empire, RGS leadership has staffed employees of the Russian General Staff. Thus, RGS is fully used in the interests of Russian military intelligence with the aim to legendize operations or show interest in certain foreign objects. In the same way, the Russian Historical Society is headed by Sergei Naryshkin, the director of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service. Taking this information in consideration, we can conclude that the Russian Intelligence Service uses the two organizations to collect intelligence, conduct operations and search for candidates to recruit.

The Russian-speaking citizen of Norway, a resident of Oslo, claimed that Russian Intelligence Services had asked him to film military bases and energy infrastructure facilities in the cities of Alta and Tromsø in northern Norway. For performing the task, the Norwegian was promised over $1,000 per shooting day, and also offered to travel to Murmansk or Arkhangelsk to attend ‘a geographical conference’. 

In fact, such a reconnaissance task performed by the Russian military intelligence is also the first stage to analyze a foreigner as a potential spy to collaborate with intelligence. Based on this incident, we can make a conclusion that the Russians scaled down their demands to the potential agents and, obviously, bet on the number of recruits than on their quality. This is the very same model of the behavior the Russian military intelligence has demonstrated in Ukraine. While building the network of informers for searching for and geolocating military and infrastructure targets to attack Russia used even minors. The fact that Russian intelligence operatives try to recruit persons with no  access to classified information seriously signals about the Kremlin’s probable preparation for active operations on the territory of NATO countries.

The Russians’ interest in the territory of Norway coincides with their increased activity at Novaya Zemlya archipelago, one of two major nuclear weapon testing sites.

The Russian special services have been spying the waters of the North Sea, in particular, on the regional critical infrastructure, for over a year. It coincides with conducting sabotage operations, in particular, damaging the Balticconnector gas pipeline. Any Russian organization acting in European countries, even non-politically colored, may serve as a cover for Russian special services which poses a serious threat to the security and stability of these very countries.European institutions should review the sanction lists and correct them by adding, in particular, RGS, which is directly linked with Russia’s intelligence activities and subversive operation organization.