In hindsight, some things just didn’t add up about Jose Giammaria.
For one, the guest researcher at the University of Tromso, in Norway’s Arctic Circle, was ostensibly Brazilian. But he couldn’t speak Portuguese. Then there was the fact that he self-funded his visit, an oddity in academia, and even planned to extend it — yet he never talked about his research. But he was always helpful, even offering to redesign the home page for the Center for Peace Studies, where he worked.
That was until Oct. 24, when Norway’s security police, the PST, arrived with a warrant to search his office. Days later, they announced his arrest as a Russian spy, named Mikhail Mikushin.
The revelation sent a chill through campus, said Marcela Douglas, who heads the Center for Peace Studies, which researches security and conflict. “I started to see spies everywhere.”
European nations have grown wary that a desperate Kremlin is exploiting their open societies to deepen attempts at spying, sabotage and infiltration. https://t.co/rbhylhc7yz
— New York Times World (@nytimesworld) December 12, 2022