The news comes in the last episode of PST’s own podcast «psst.».
Section leader of the counterintelligence department in PST, Atle Tangen, talks about the importance of having the security service’s history with them in the work they do.
Tangen highlights the migration flow at the Storskog border station in Finnmark back in 2015.
– Then PST spent considerable resources on searching for foreign intelligence in the migration stream that came. We found that too. There we found that foreign countries’ services had sent people on missions, says Tangen in the podcast.
Lots of bicycles were left on the Norwegian side, after over 5,000 asylum seekers crossed the border at Storskog in autumn 2015.
Photo: Knut-Sverre Horn / NRK
PST: – Still applicable
When asked by NRK, Tangen confirms that PST has not previously gone public with this, but he does not want to say what happened to those who were exposed.
Atle Tangen is section leader for the counterintelligence department in PST.
Photo: Vilde Helljesen / NRK
– The people involved were looked after and handled in different ways. I don’t want to say anything about their nationality, says the section leader in PST.
– These are conditions that are still interesting for PST. Illegal intelligence against refugees, and the recruitment of refugees who are on their way to Norway to get them to carry out illegal intelligence here, is still relevant. For that reason, we cannot be more detailed about this now, says Atle Tangen.
– Was this espionage?
– I do not want to use the term spies for those we discovered. These were not intelligence agents in the traditional sense, but people who had been tricked or threatened by intelligence organizations into carrying out missions for them. It shows the challenges we face and which methods are used. This is still a real problem, says Tangen.
Cycled across the border
What happened in 2015 was that, among other things, Syrians, Afghans and Iraqis cycled up to the Norwegian border from the Russian side, and applied for asylum in their hundreds every week.
Russia researcher Karen-Anna Eggen works at the Institute for Defense Studies in Oslo.
Photo: Mathias Moene Rød / NRK
Researcher Karen-Anna Eggen is writing her PhD on Russian information confrontation and gray zone operations.
She thinks this is very interesting information from PST.
– I am not very surprised considering what we know about the type of player Russia is. The refugee flow in 2015 is, if not started by Russia, then it is certainly something they have very likely realized that they can use to their own advantage at some point. This applies both to us and then afterwards to Finland, says Eggen to NRK.
The researcher says refugees who were sent across the border may have been threatened to cooperate and send information back.
– It could be that they give notice that you will not cross the border if you do not agree to cooperate with us. That they have done it to try to get an overview and check what is a stress reaction on the Norwegian side. It is not surprising, says the Russian researcher.
From documents previously obtained by NRK from the Norwegian Police’s immigration unit, PU, it appears that the total number of asylum seekers was 5,464 people who crossed the border in 2015.
– The FSB has steel control in the border area
Karen-Anna Eggen points out that it is the Russian security service FSB that is responsible for border control and “runs the show” in the north.
– You have to go through three border crossings with a check at each post before you get to the Norwegian border crossing. In the north, it is also no secret that there are military areas, so they have extra good control over who is in the area. They have steel control over who moves in the area. So many could not have made it to the border without the FSB’s will and knowledge.
What happened on the border with Finland last year is an indication that 2015 was a test, the researcher believes. She still does not think the same will happen at Storskog now.
– Until then, it is not in Russia’s interest to send refugees across Norway. It is about the fact that it is the last remaining border crossing to Europe that is still open and Russia needs to send people in, whether they are ordinary people or whether they are spies. So it is probably in their interest that the border in the north is still open, says Eggen.
2024-01-05 21:32:18
#PST #Migrants #Russian #border #espionage #missions
