When the war in Ukraine started, Europe and Latvia expelled embassy employees who were spies. Both the SAB and the Estonian Foreign Intelligence Service claim that Russia is now actively using “illegals” – Russian spies who work under cover. It goes without saying that the activities of such persons have been noticed in our country as well, reports the TV3 program “Neka personaliska”.
The TV series “The Traitor” was made in Estonia. It tells about the former head of the Security Department of the Estonian Ministry of Defense, Herman Simma. He was arrested in 2008 for years of passing NATO secrets to Russia. Simma’s contact person was a Spanish citizen of South American origin and used a business consulting firm as a cover, being interested in what was happening in Latvia as well. But in reality he was an employee of the Russian special service. Such persons are called “illegals”, which the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and also the Estonian intelligence agencies pay special attention to in the reports published this year, unlike in previous years.
“If we are talking about illegals who operate without any visible connection to their representative country – in this case you mentioned Russia. These persons are prepared for a long time and with a certain legend, with some certain logical reason. Either they visit certain countries, about which is interested in getting information about staying in these countries. Both are used under the guise of tourists. Last year, Norway announced the arrest of a couple of Russian tourists who used a drone to record certain infrastructure parameters. In the Netherlands, in the first half of last year, a Brazilian citizen allegedly tried to start a job relations in The Hague. It was established that this person is actually a Russian, a Russian citizen. These are cases that show how these illegals, without being linked to the country of origin, try to infiltrate in order to start some activity of their own and gain access or create access for themselves for interesting information. This process is time-consuming,” says SAB boss Egils Zviedris.
The Swede emphasizes that relations with Russia are currently at a low enough level and cold enough, but they are. And at the moment, there are no prerequisites to tear them down either.
In response to the question why it is not possible to prevent the activities of such illegals, the Swede answers: “We are talking about the fact that embassies still perform certain functions, solving some kind of practical issues, both to defend the interests of their nationals, and also to solve an issue, respectively. We are, by adopting these decisions of the previous year, we minimized these possibilities. No head of the security service can claim that they can be prevented 100%, since the question is about minimizing all these risks.”
