NATO intern arrested in Belgium on spying charge

The woman, identified as Laken Pavan, pleaded guilty in December 2024 to participating in Russian intelligence activities against Poland and was sentenced to 20 months in prison, according to a CBC News investigation. She was 17 when she left Vancouver in April 2024 and eventually traveled to Russian-occupied Donetsk, where she was recruited by an agent of Russia's Federal Security Service (FSB). Polish prosecutors said Pavan was arrested on May 23, 2024, after she got drunk at a Warsaw hotel bar and confessed to being a Russian spy.

She told investigators she had been pressured into espionage and was tasked with gathering information on the Polish military. The court showed what it called "extraordinary" leniency because of her cooperation and confession, and her sentence included time served in pre-trial custody. She was scheduled for release in January 2026.

Pavan's mother, Andelaine Nelson, told CBC News that her daughter came from a military family and had been a Canadian Armed Forces reservist. The Department of National Defence confirmed that Pavan's time as a reservist ended in October 2024, five months after her arrest. A family lawyer, John Kingman Phillips, said the family believes Canadian authorities had the teenager under surveillance before she left the country and should have intervened.

Keir Giles, a senior consulting fellow at Chatham House, told CBC News that Russia's FSB has been aggressively recruiting agents online to harass NATO nations, often targeting vulnerable individuals. "The investment of time and resources in doing this is tiny compared to the potential results," Giles said. A Belgian police officer was charged with spying for China earlier this year, and a Canadian civilian was convicted by a Canadian military court for impaired driving outside NATO's Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe in 2022.