Jeffrey Delisle - A Russian Spy in Canada?

Or did they?

The Russian Government has hotly denied that its diplomats were linked to Delisle, and claimed that they left Canada as part of a long-planned rotation of embassy staff.

As evidence they pointed out that Konstantin Kopalkov must have known of his departure well in advance – otherwise, how else would he have been able to hold his leaving party in Ottawa on December 8th last year.

Kopalkov also sent an email round to colleagues to tell them of his departure and to wish them well for their future. “Please be advised that I am leaving the country for good in the end of December, 2011,” he wrote, adding that he “would like to highlight that it was a real pleasure to work in Canada. I wish you all the best, well-being and prosperity!”

Criticism

Delisle’s arrest and the subsequent expulsion of Russian diplomats has been headline news in Canada, prompting some great coverage of previous Russian spies in Canada – notably Gerda Munsinger, pictured below, who allegedly bedded a number of senior Conservative politicians in the 1950s.

Gerda Munsinger, an East German prostitute, was accused of sleeping with Canadian politicians while Russian spies evesdropped

However, in Russia, a country normally fascinated by its own spies, the story has hardly received any coverage at all.

Russia has dismissed the way that the affair has been handled, calling the news “sensational” and “unsubstantiated”, and the Canadian Government has also come in for criticism from its own media for its needless “Russophobia”.

Steven Harper, the Conservative Canadian Prime Minister, has come in for particular criticism for his Cold War mentality – according to Christopher Westdal, Canada’s former Ambassador to Russia, he “came with… baggage of deep suspicion of Russia” – and for placing more emphasis on impressing Canada’s large Eastern European immigrant population than on securing Canada’s wider national interests.

Interestingly, there has been little public criticism yet of Canada’s internal security arrangements, and of how Delisle managed to evade detection for so long.

Jeffrey Delisle, “Loner and Geek”

As is traditional in cases like this, the Canadian media has already begun to trot out the ‘Delisle was a loner’ stories. Ian Wilson, one of his former classmates, provided the obliging quote this time:

“He was probably one of the biggest geeks in the school. He definitely wasn’t an outgoing party animal type guy. He was one of those guys who was always under the radar.”

Delisle, who worked as an intelligence officer in the Canadian Navy and had access to secret data from other NATO countries, will go on trial shortly, accused of selling classified information to Russia between 2007 and 2001.

He was reportedly identified by Canadian intelligence some time ago, and for the past few years has been un-knowingly used to provide Russia with false information – turning him into what is described as a ‘sour-milk spy’. Some analysts have cast doubt on this story, however, noting that it may be an attempt to persuade Russia that the information it bought from Delisle was unreliable.

Mystery of Russian Spy in Canada is a post from: Siberian Light

Arctic Progress looks set to be an important blog covering a region that, until now, has received little mainstream coverage and certainly no real blog coverage that I’m aware of. And it seems as if Anatoly has picked a perfect time to launch his blog – arctic ice is melting, opening up direct shipping routes between Europe and Asia, oil deposits are being discovered all over the place (the latest is in Greenland), and the region’s ecology is in delicate balance, so whatever happens over the next fifty years will shape the destiny of this region, and perhaps even the world.

As Anatoly notes, “Arctic history begins this year… We are the observers of the start of a new era.”

Russia is one of the major countries with an interest in the region (others include the United States, Canada and the Scandinavian countries) so I’m sure that Arctic Progress will contain plenty of information relevant to Russia-watchers.

One interesting post relevant to Russia that’s already appeared is Anatoly’s report that, after receiving a $5 billion bailout from Russia last year, Iceland has offered its Keflavik airbase to ECA Program Ltd, a private military company that plans to station up to 30 Su-27 fighter jets there. ECA plan to buy the jets from Belarus (price not known, but it would be the largest purchase of military jets by a private company to date) and to use them for mock-dogfights that will help to train air-forces around the world.

Anatoly speculates that they could be a front for either the Russian or Chinese secret services, or potentially even a US “black-operations” programme. Having done a bit of research on PMCs in the past, I wouldn’t be surprised if the less prosaic truth is that it simply a company with an innovative, albiet very expensive and politically sensitive, idea to make money.

Having read the initial posts over at Arctic Progress I know I’ll be subscribing. I encourage you to check it out too.

New Blog: Arctic Progress is a post from: Siberian Light