Russia reportedly endured a series of embarrassing spy unmaskings by Western governments before it arrested Wall Street Journal reporter Evan Gershkovich on Thursday.

According to the Justice Department, U.S. authorities last week unmasked an alleged Russian spy who tried to pass as a Brazilian graduate student at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. Prosecutors say the alleged spy attempted to get a job at the International Criminal Court in The Hague.

In Poland, nine Russians were arrested this month and accused of planning to sabotage rail routes that supply Ukraine with Western aid, while the governments of Germany, Sweden, and Norway all say they have foiled Russian attempts at spying in recent months.

The owner of a knitting shop in Athens, Greece, turned out to be an alleged Russian spy, Greek officials said.

Approximately half of Russia’s spies working under diplomatic cover in Europe were expelled within six months of Moscow’s February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, the head of Britain’s MI6 foreign intelligence service told NBC.

A former senior U.S. counterintelligence official told the outlet that the FBI and the CIA have helped allied countries arrest an exceedingly high number of Russian spies since the conflict in Ukraine began, though another American official said the U.S. does not always assist in the arrests.

"Many countries have robust capabilities to counter Russian intelligence efforts all on their own," the official said.

Former intelligence officials say it is too early to determine why the Kremlin detained Gershkovich on Thursday and charged him with espionage. Both his newspaper and the Biden administration have denied the allegations.

Russian President Vladimir Putin could be trying to reinforce the message that Western countries are conspiring to weaken Russia or he could be looking for a bargaining chip to use with the West.

"Often it’s internal political dynamics in Russia driving these decisions," John Sipher, a former senior CIA officer who was based in Russia, told NBC. "Even though Putin controls things, he clearly wants to create these narratives that foreigners are causing trouble. Arresting a foreign reporter and claiming they are a spy — which we know is not true — feeds the narrative that the West is undercutting us from the inside and there are enemies everywhere. A lot of things are coming together here, and it’s hard to say what this is, but it’s clearly part of the arsenal of weapons for the Kremlin."

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