Skullduggery in the North.
From The Economist's 1843 Magazine, August 29:
For residents of Kirkenes, on the border of Norway and Russia, espionage is an everyday fact of life
Frode Berg was a border inspector on the brink of retirement when, in 2014, he was first recruited by the Norwegian Intelligence Service (nis). Berg was based in Kirkenes, a town of 3,500 nestled amid the pine forests and rocky fjords in the north of Norway, five miles from the Russian border. Kirkenes is known for two things: its king crab and its spies. Accordingly, Berg was no stranger to the nis and their work – his job frequently took him to Russia, and he had got to know a handful of nis officials over the years, including the case officer who was asking for his co-operation. But he had never before been asked to take any risks on behalf of the Norwegian government. Now the case officer was asking him to transport an envelope containing €3,000 ($3,250) in cash across the border and post it to a Moscow address. A brief excursion into Russia wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary, so Berg agreed to do it. “I say yes to everything,” he told me.
In the ensuing months, Berg would travel to Russia six times with cash-stuffed envelopes, which he’d post as instructed. Included in each envelope would be a note describing the money as poker winnings. Over time, Berg was given a new handler, and the requests grew more involved – not just transporting and mailing money, but also, in one instance, a memory card. Berg grew increasingly uncomfortable with the arrangement. He tried to quit on several occasions, but his new handler was persistent. Finally, he acquiesced to one last assignment.
On his last run, just before Christmas of 2017, Berg’s worst fears were realised: he was rolled up outside his Moscow hotel by the fsb, Russia’s domestic security service. The fsb officers spirited him away to the notorious Lefortovo prison.
On his last run, just before Christmas of 2017, Berg’s worst fears were realised: he was rolled up outside his Moscow hotel by the FSB, Russia’s domestic security service
At the trial, the Russians filled in what his handlers had neglected to explain. The contents of the memory card turned out to be questions about submarine weapons systems. And the supposed recipient of the money Berg posted – a worker at a state shipyard – turned out to be a double agent. In 2019, Berg was found guilty of espionage. Seven months later, he was sent home in a prisoner exchange. When he landed in Oslo, the first words he recalls hearing were from a defence-ministry official. “Welcome home,” the official said. “We are offering you 4m kroner [about $375,000].”
Berg’s embroilment in the local spy scene, I would learn when I visited Kirkenes in May, is an experience shared – if to a less extreme degree – by many locals. “Everyone in Kirkenes has had a neighbour, a friend, someone in the sports club, or a fellow parent in the kindergarten who works in military intelligence,” said Thomas Nilsen, editor of the Independent Barents Observer, a newspaper that covers the region. For decades, Kirkenes and the surrounding region have been of strategic value for nato. Its listening posts dot the craggy landscape to monitor the goings-on next door. Russia maintains several military bases in the area, including the headquarters of its Northern Fleet. The war in Ukraine has rendered this electronic snooping more urgent and, for Russia, more intolerable. The mood in the town has also shifted since the invasion. Spying, said Lena Bergeng, the mayor, has “been more of a daily theme in the community. Before we didn’t think about it, but now everybody is very aware of it.”
Locals who regularly traverse the border have, for a long time, often been approached by Norwegian intelligence officers (though since the war began there have been fewer people making such crossings). A debrief – a meeting to elicit information about Russia from a recent visitor – is the most common request. For many locals, this is an unwelcome proposition. The best prospective sources are also the people most imperilled by co-operation – those with business interests or personal connections in Russia. Rune Rafaelsen, Bergeng’s predecessor as mayor, told me that Kirkenes residents who worked in Russia used to come to his office distraught after contact from Norwegian intelligence officers. The requests could be intrusive and high risk. In one case, Rafaelsen recalled, officers from the nis, which declined to comment on this story, asked the owner of a business with offices in Murmansk to hire one of their own, so he could use the job as cover.
At times, to their perplexity and irritation, Kirkenes residents are approached by both the nis and pst – Norway’s domestic security service. Officers from one agency will turn up, ask some questions, then leave, only for officers from the other to arrive soon after and repeat the process. “They get bored answering the same questions,” said the journalist Bård Wormdal, whose new book “Spionkrigen” (“The Spy War”), chronicles espionage in Arctic Norway....
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