Brazilian federal agents have exposed a sophisticated Russian intelligence operation that used the South American country as an "assembly line for deep-cover operatives,” according to a report by The New York Times.

The operation unmasked at least nine officers who lived for years under false identities before deploying to targets across the West.

The three-year counterintelligence investigation, dubbed Operation East, represents what independent Russian news outlet Agentstvo described as "one of the biggest failures of the Russian intelligence services," comparable to the exposure of 11 spies in the US 15 years ago.

Russian operatives shed their true identities to become Brazilian citizens, starting businesses, forming relationships and building authentic cover stories over many years.

Rather than spying on Brazil itself, the goal was to acquire credible Brazilian identities before deploying to the US, Europe or the Middle East for actual intelligence work.

CIA tip sparks investigation

The unravelling began in April 2022, weeks after Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, when the CIA alerted Brazil's Federal Police to Victor Muller Ferreira – real name Sergey Cherkasov – who had secured an internship with the International Criminal Court in The Hague as it prepared to investigate Russian war crimes.

Cherkasov, whose story was first exposed by investigative outlet Bellingcat in June 2022, was admitted to Johns Hopkins University's graduate school in Washington in 2018 after a stint at Dublin's Trinity College. He had spent nearly a decade building his false identity. During one of his trips, Dutch authorities denied him entry and returned him to São Paulo, where Brazilian agents arrested him on document fraud charges.

His Brazilian passport and identification documents initially appeared authentic, but investigation of his birth certificate revealed fatal flaws.

The document stated he was born in Rio de Janeiro in 1989 to a Brazilian mother who died in 1993, but agents discovered the woman never had a child and couldn't locate anyone matching the father's name.

"Everything started with Sergey," a senior Brazilian official told The New York Times.

Russian authorities later unsuccessfully attempted to "rescue" Cherkasov by issuing an international arrest warrant, claiming that he "was part of a crime group that smuggled drugs from Afghanistan via Tajikistan and sold them to gangs in Russia between 2011 and 2013," according to Bellingcat.

Sophisticated identity creation

The discovery prompted agents to search for "ghosts" – people with legitimate birth certificates who appeared suddenly as adults without prior records in Brazil. The painstaking analysis of millions of identity documents revealed the scope of the Russian operation.

Brazil proved an ideal location for the scheme. The Brazilian passport ranks among the world's most useful, allowing visa-free travel to nearly as many countries as US documents.

The country's multicultural population makes European-featured individuals with slight accents unremarkable.

Yet Brazil's decentralised birth certificate system contains a crucial vulnerability – authorities will issue certificates to anyone declaring a baby was born to at least one Brazilian parent in rural areas, requiring only two witnesses.

One exposed operative, Artem Shmyrev, lived as Gerhard Daniel Campos Wittich, running a successful 3D printing business in Rio de Janeiro. He spoke perfect Portuguese with an accent he attributed to childhood in Austria, fooling his Brazilian girlfriend and colleagues completely.

"He was a work addict," said Felipe Martinez, a former client who befriended the spy, as quoted by The New York Times. "He thought big, you know?"

However, Shmyrev privately expressed frustration with undercover life in text messages to his Russian intelligence officer wife.

"No real achievements in work. I am not where I have to be for two years already," he wrote.

Global network exposed

The investigation identified spies across multiple countries. A married couple lived in Portugal as Manuel Francisco Steinbruck Pereira and Adriana Carolina Costa Silva Pereira, whilst others operated in Uruguay under Brazilian identities.

One posed as a model, another ran a jewellery business featured on Brazilian television.

Intelligence experts believe Russian authorities recalled many operatives as global focus intensified on Russian espionage following the Ukraine invasion.

Only Cherkasov remains imprisoned, serving a five-year sentence for document forgery.

Brazilian authorities used Interpol blue notices to expose the spies' identities globally, effectively ending their intelligence careers. The alerts circulated names, photographs and fingerprints to 196 member countries under the pretext of investigating fraudulent documents.

‘You're going to hear things about me’

Shmyrev escaped Brazil days before agents moved to arrest him in December 2022, leaving behind electronic devices containing crucial evidence and $12,000 cash – suggesting he planned to return. His last known contact was a phone call to his Brazilian girlfriend.

"You're going to hear things about me, but you need to know that I never did anything that bad. Like I never killed anyone or something like that. My past caught up with me,” he reportedly said.

Independent Russian outlet Agentstvo reported on May 22 that some exposed operatives have returned to Russia under their real names, with spy Olga Tyutereva now working as a teacher in the Magadan region.

The operation dealt a devastating blow to Moscow's "illegals" programme, eliminating highly trained officers who will be difficult to replace. With their covers blown, the operatives will most likely never work abroad again, according to intelligence experts.

Brazil's investigation spanned at least eight countries with intelligence cooperation from the US, Israel, Netherlands, Uruguay and other Western security services, demonstrating the global response to Russian espionage following the Ukraine invasion.