The Dutch intelligence service has said it stopped a Russian spy - posing as an intern - from accessing the International Criminal Court, which is investigating war crimes in Ukraine.
The Netherlands' General Intelligence and Security Service is known as the AIVD.
In a statement, it said: "The AIVD prevented a Russian intelligence officer from gaining access as an intern to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague."
The statement added that the man worked for Russia's GRU military intelligence and used a Brazilian cover identity.
But he was unmasked as a member of Russia's GRU military intelligence and refused entry in April as a "threat to national security", the AIVD said in a statement.
The Dutch named him as Sergey Vladimirovich Cherkasov, 36, saying he had claimed to be a 33-year-old Brazilian citizen named Viktor Muller Ferreira in his bid to access the Hague-based ICC.
Covert access to the ICC would be "highly valuable to the Russian intelligence services" as it is probing both Ukraine and the Russian war in Georgia in 2008, it said.
"The illegal was supposed to commence an internship with the ICC, which would mean he would have access to the ICC's building and systems," the AIVD said.
Had the Russian spy succeeded "he would have been able to gather intelligence there and to look for (or recruit) sources, and arrange to have access to the ICC's digital systems," it added.
"He might also have been able to influence criminal proceedings of the ICC."
The Dutch agency said it "holds him to be a threat to national security" and alerted the immigration services before his arrival.
"On these grounds the intelligence officer was refused entry into the Netherlands in April and declared unacceptable. He was sent back to Brazil on the first flight out," it said.
"The ICC has also been informed of this case."
There was no immediate response from the ICC, which opened a probe into potential war crimes in Ukraine shortly after Russia's invasion on 24 February.
