‘Russian spy’ charmed her way into Nato circles in Naples

A glamorous young Russian woman who posed as a jewellery entrepreneur and socialite succeeded in infiltrating social circles connected to an important Nato base in Naples, an Italian newspaper has claimed.

The woman, who spoke six languages and adopted the identity of Maria Adela Kuhfeldt Rivera, the daughter of a Peruvian mother and a German father, spent almost ten years cultivating friendships with staff from the Allied Joint Force Command and the US Sixth Fleet, La Repubblica reported.

Ostensibly born in Peru in 1978, Rivera used membership of the Lions Club Napoli Monte Nuovo to approach military personnel from the Nato base at Lago Patria near the Sixth Fleet’s home port of Naples. The club, part of a network of volunteer organisations intended to serve local communities, was originally founded by Nato officers.

La Repubblica said the woman had been introduced to the club by one of its leading members, who had told associates that she would be able to revive the club thanks to her international contacts and connections to civil society in the Naples area.

The woman’s identification as an alleged spy for Russia’s GRU military intelligence service was the result of a ten-month investigation by the Italian newspaper in conjunction with the German magazine Der Spiegel and the websites Bellingcat and The Insider, which specialises in investigations into the activities of the Russian security apparatus.

A German lieutenant colonel, identified only as Thorsten S, told Der Spiegel the woman had been particularly active in 2018 and had even offered to pay for everyone’s membership fee when numbers started to decline. “I never understood what her motive was,” he said.

One of Rivera’s Naples friends was Colonel Shelia Bryant, who was inspector general of American naval forces in Europe and Africa at the time.

Bryant said Rivera’s account of her life was confused and unconvincing. “It was difficult to understand where she got her money: she had opened a shop and often changed her apartment in the smartest areas of the city without credible sources of income,” Bryant told La Repubblica.

“I never spoke about politics with her and I had limited access to the confidential military information that might have been of interest to the GRU.”

Bryant said Rivera had contacts with officers from Italy, Belgium and Germany, as well as with the Americans. “We tried to help her in what appeared to be her sentimental problems with men,” Bryant said.

Between 2009 and 2011 Rivera had lived and studied in western Europe, befriending people such as Marcelle D’Argy Smith, former editor of the UK edition of Cosmopolitan magazine, whom she met over drinks in Malta in the summer of 2010.

The paper said the woman, whose real name was Olga Kolobova, disappeared from Italy in September 2018, claiming she was receiving treatment for cancer in Moscow.

La Repubblica described Rivera as a modern-day Mata Hari who had left a trail of broken hearts behind her and had succeeded in penetrating the leadership of the Atlantic alliance to an extent that no Russian agent had achieved before.

Bellingcat, which said it used facial recognition and other data to track down Rivera’s real identity, said there was no evidence that western counter-intelligence had identified the presence of a Russian spy close to a Nato structure that leads missions in Iraq, Kosovo and Africa.

“None of ‘Maria Adela’s’ acquaintances we spoke with – all of whom could be traced to her via open-source data – had been approached by either Nato or law-enforcement to be debriefed about their interaction with the Russian,” the publication said.