Estonia arrests Russian ex-KGB intelligence officers

By JOSEPH FITSANAKIS | intelNews.org
Authorities in Estonia have announced the arrest of two Russian citizens, said to be former employees of the Soviet-era KGB, who allegedly crossed into Estonian territory without a permit. The men have been identified as Alexandr Ladur, 54, and Mikhail Suhoshin, 64, and are reportedly retired intelligence officers. Estonian border police said the two men were apprehended while sailing on the river Narva, which flows from Lake Peipsi into the Baltic Sea and forms part of the border between Estonia and Russia. The two Russian citizens are being held on charges of illegally entering Estonian territory and resisting arrest. This is the second major diplomatic incident between Russia and the Baltic former Soviet republic in recent months. IntelNews regulars will recall that, in early September, the government of Estonia said Eston Kohver, a counterintelligence officer in the country’s Internal Security Service, was abducted by “a team of unidentified individuals from Russia”. The Estonian side claimed that the abduction had occurred at a border-crossing facility in southeastern Estonia. But Russian sources said at the time that Kohver had been detained while on Russian soil. Russian media later reported that the Estonian counterintelligence officer had been captured by Russia’s Federal Security Service, known as FSB, while undertaking an “espionage operation” inside Russia. Reports in the Russian press said Kohver was caught in Russia’s Pskov region, carrying a loaded firearm, €5,000 ($6,500) in cash, “covert video recording equipment”, an “eavesdropping device”, as well as “other items relating to the gathering of intelligence”. British newspaper The Guardian quoted Kalev Stoicescu, Russia expert at the International Center for Defense Studies in Estonian capital Tallinn, who did not rule out that the two alleged former KGB officers may in fact “have been merely fishing”. But he added that Russian intelligence services are “testing all types of borders” of several neighboring nations that are members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization or the European Union, such as Estonia. “They do this to provoke, but also to test reactions, both technically and politically”, said Stoicescu. Moscow has denied the Estonian government’s allegations about the two detainees.