When it comes to spies, most people imagine something from the movies: strict suits, dark basements, mysterious conversations in alleys. But in the case of Russia, everything is much more banal – cornfields, abandoned villages and fake documents. This is exactly what the “conveyor” for the production of deeply secret agents that the Kremlin has set up in Brazil looks like. The story of Sergei Cherkasov, who was exposed as a spy, formed the basis of a high-profile investigation by the American New York Times, and later by other Western media. It was from there that the world learned how Russian intelligence cultivates its “shadows” – people without a past, without a future, with a fictional biography, bent on only one thing – to serve the imperial scum called Russia.
In the Brazilian town of Padre Bernardo, lost in the middle of an unremarkable province, a man known to everyone as Victor Muller Ferreira lived for years. His real name was Sergey Cherkasov; he was a GRU agent, and he led a double life using a fake birth certificate. Thanks to weak local registration systems, he obtained a full package of documents for a Brazilian citizen: a passport, a driver’s license and an identification number. Then he studied in the United States, tried to get a job at the International Criminal Court in The Hague to spy from the inside. In the end, he was exposed, arrested in Brazil and sentenced to 15 years for using fake documents. But the story did not gain the resonance it should have, because the Russian poison had long since spread around the world.
And Cherkasov is not alone. Another agent, Mikhail Mikushin, worked as a researcher at the University of Tromsø in Norway under the assumed name José Assis Giammaria. Successful, integrated into the European scientific community, he wrote about security in the Arctic until he was exposed as another spy in the game. Or the story of Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich, at first glance an ordinary owner of a 3D printing shop in Rio de Janeiro. In reality, he was a Russian agent, Shmyryov, who fled to Moscow with his wife, also an agent. All they left behind was an empty office and many questions.
Russia systematically uses Brazil as an incubator for creating fake identities. This is a cheap but effective method – the distance from Europe, the lack of thorough verification of documents and a sufficiently developed infrastructure make it possible to grow an agent supposedly “out of nowhere”, who would be believed in any American or European university. And these agents are not Hollywood cartoons with pistols, but well-educated “invisibles” who infiltrate key international institutions, embassies, and research centres. They are the silent weapons of the old imperialism.
And while Brazilian FSB recruiters are only just beginning to cause a stir in the Western press, the Germans are already judging them for it. In Germany, a trial is underway against three men accused of espionage and sabotage in favour of Russia. One of them is a German citizen, the others are from the countries of the former USSR. According to the investigation, they collected information about critical infrastructure, investigated the logistics of military aid to Ukraine, and, most frighteningly, prepared to blow up facilities related to the supply of weapons. The Kremlin has turned people who enjoyed the freedoms of Europe into instruments of war. And this is not a spy novel, this is our reality.
These stories are just the tip of the iceberg. From São Paulo to Berlin, Russian intelligence services have created a shadow empire of influence. Through pressure, money, blackmail, or simply a stupid imperial ideology that has taken root in their heads. But each such exposed operation is a crack in the concrete of the Russian hybrid front. And the more the world learns, the more likely it is that this concrete will inevitably crack.
The fact that Russia, with its phantom ambitions, continues to clone spies in various countries is not just about espionage. It is about the fact that the empire cannot live without parasitism. It permeates the world like rot, quietly and systematically. It lies, creates phantoms to stay alive. But the time for dung is running out. And the more such stories become public, the sooner the world will close this page once and for all.
Why this story is important for the Anti-Imperial Block of Nations
This story is not just about spies, saboteurs, and mercenaries. It is about how an empire rotting from within is trying to grow tentacles worldwide. From Latin America to Europe, from Central Asia to the Middle East, Russia acts like a classic colonial power: it bribes, recruits, intimidates, and manipulates. For us, the peoples who seek liberation from empires, this is a warning: Russian imperialism is not limited to the war in Ukraine. It creeps everywhere like poison. Therefore, the fight against it is a joint one. This is not just a Ukrainian war, it is a global front. And every agent debunked, every operation exposed is our joint step towards a world without empires.
Danyil Kozachok
