TARTO Since 2009, twenty people have been convicted in Estonia of spying for various Russian intelligence services.
The most recently publicized suspicion is directed at the professor of international politics at the University of Tartu to Vyacheslav Morozov. Estonian Protection Police arrested him in early January. Morozov is currently in pretrial detention.
Former head of the Estonian Protection Police, also living in Tartu Arnold Sinisalu is not surprised by the interest of the Russian intelligence authorities in the scientific world.
– It is often mistaken to think that the intelligence services of the great powers are only interested in state secrets. This is not true, says Sinisalu.
According to him, Russia is building espionage in the very long term. A lot of interest is also focused on background information, such as personal relationships, disputes and so on.
– Morozov had a good excuse to deal with people who do Russian research in the West. This could have been strategically very useful, Sinisalu sums up.
The threat of imprisonment prevents recruitment
The most famous person in Estonia’s recent history who spied for Russia is Herman Simm. He had time to make a spectacular career, for example as police chief and in the Ministry of Defense of Estonia, before he was caught in 2008.
Simm was convicted of treason in 2009. Simm’s case was a shock to the Estonian authorities, but lessons were also learned from it.
– One of the decisions made at the time was that espionage cases are always resolved as criminal cases, Sinisalu, the former head of the protection police, states.
Not all European countries understood the willingness of Estonians to bring espionage cases to light.
– We decided not to start playing spy games by trying to recruit those caught as double agents or something similar. A small country needs a little harder grip, says Sinisalu.
The Estonian line has also acted as a deterrent. According to Sinisalu, some of the people approached by the Russian intelligence services have told the security police that they did not agree to cooperate with the Russians because the threat of imprisonment is real in Estonia.
Dual citizenship is not automatically a recruitment risk
asked Arnold Sinisalu to estimate how many people there are in Russia who manage espionage against Estonia. Sinisalu emphasizes that it is only an estimate, but that there are hundreds of such persons.
– Including all support services, there can be closer to a thousand of them. However, the same person can manage operations against Finland, Latvia or Lithuania in addition to Estonia.
A separate issue is how effective the intelligence is.
– There is a lot of fake news, i.e. sham operations, corruption and unnecessary bureaucracy.
However, Sinisalu emphasizes that Russian intelligence services should never be underestimated.
– In Russia, there are dozens of officials who directly recruit agents and manage personnel sources. If, for example, only ten of them do their job properly, it has an impact.
The Russian intelligence authorities are currently focusing especially on residents of Western countries visiting Russia.
– All persons who visit Russia are in great danger if they are at all of interest to the Russian intelligence services, Sinisalu emphasizes.
Sinisalu does not consider dual citizenship, which is much talked about in Finland, to be an automatic risk for cooperating with Russian intelligence.
– The importance of citizenship is much lower than personal reasons.
However, he admits that Russian citizens have a constitutional obligation to help their country.
– If a person lives in the West and goes to visit Russia, it is possible to manipulate a person by referring to this obligation. Especially if this person is of a more uncertain type or kompromat (damaging material) has been obtained from him.