Brazil authorises expulsion of Russian accused of espionage

BRASÍLIA: Brazil has authorised the expulsion of a Russian national accused by the US of posing as a Brazilian student in Europe to gather information about Ukraine, according to a decision published Monday.

Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, who has been imprisoned in Brazil since 2022, is sought for extradition by both Washington and Moscow – the former on the basis of espionage charges and the latter for drug trafficking.

The Brazilian government’s decision, published in the official gazette on Monday, did not specify the country to which the 40-year-old will be expelled.

Cherkasov was arrested in 2022 in the Netherlands, where he was posing as a Brazilian master’s student.

Dutch police determined that he was an agent of Moscow’s GRU military intelligence and seeking to infiltrate the International Criminal Court in The Hague to influence cases related to war crimes in Ukraine.

He was deported to Brazil, where he was sentenced to 15 years in prison for identity fraud.

That year, Russia requested the extradition of Cherakov, saying he was a drug trafficker.

The US accused Cherkasov in 2023 of acting as an agent of a foreign power while studying at Johns Hopkins University in Washington between 2018 and 2020, and asked Brazil to extradite him.

Cherkasov allegedly posed as a graduate student to collect information about US citizens, which he then passed on to his Russian superiors, according to US authorities.