The Dutch ambassador in Moscow has been “carpeted” by the Kremlin in an escalating row over allegations that the Netherlands facilitated a “provocative” attempt by the British intelligence service to recruit a Russian diplomat in The Hague last month.
The ambassador was formally rebuked on Monday, just 48 hours after the head of Dutch military intelligence took the unusual step of warning Dutch entrepreneurs that they could be approached by fake investors trying to buy innovative new technology for Russia and circumvent sanctions.
The tit-for-tat accusations are part of a diplomatic cold war between the West and Moscow since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last February. The spat blew up in the case of the Netherlands with the expulsion of 17 Russian diplomats for espionage the following month.
Dutch intelligence sources said at the time that all 17 – some of whom worked for Russian overseas military intelligence, the GRU – had been tasked with “purchasing knowledge and innovative technology for the Russian army”, desperate for a competitive edge on Ukraine’s battlefields.
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Last week Jan Swillens, head of Dutch military intelligence service MIVD, said he had informed defence minister Kajsa Ollongren about the activities of Russian “front companies” approaching unwitting Dutch businesses.
He said the Russians had shown interest predominantly in products with dual civilian-military use: everything from the microchips, microcircuits and connectors that are critical to a new generation of high-tech weaponry, to new paint for the rubber tyres of military vehicles.
He revealed that a smuggling route had already been established from the Netherlands to Russia, the details of which had also been given to the minister.
On the basis of this type of intelligence, with input from policing agency Europol, a 55-year-old man from the east of the Netherlands was arrested last month on charges of supplying microchips to Russia, in contravention of sanctions.
“This has been happening since the annexation of Crimea, but with the war in Ukraine it has increased significantly,” Mr Swillens told financial daily newspaper FD – urging the tech sector to carry out its own research.
The row that led to the rebuke of the Dutch ambassador on Monday is the latest against that backdrop of already-sour relations – previously complicated by the shooting down of the MH17 passenger flight over the Donbas in Ukraine in July 2014.
The ambassador, Gilles Beschoor Plug, was told that British spies tried to recruit the Russian military attache in the Netherlands at a meeting in The Hague on October 20th.
He was told it had been the latest case of facilitating “provocative” acts by “foreign agencies”, including British intelligence and the CIA, that would lead to a “worsening” of relations between the Netherlands and Russia.
