Former Russian spy Artyom Zinchenko, who was captured in Estonia in 2017 and later returned to Russia by exchange, fled Russia and returned to Estonia, news portal ‘Yahoo News’ found in an exclusive interview with the former indicator light.
In an interview with “Yahoo News” journalist Michael Weiss, Zinchenko said he returned to Estonia because he cannot accept the Russian invasion of Ukraine. He returned to Estonia, crossing the border in late September or early October. The exact date was not disclosed to the reporter.
“The terrible situation that happened on February 24,” Zinchenko said, speaking of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. “It’s the worst-case scenario I could imagine, and not just because my relatives live there, but also because of the huge number of innocent victims,” Zinchenko said.
The return of 35-year-old Zinchenko to Estonia is an embarrassment for Russia’s top intelligence agency (GRU), which Estonia said was unaware of Zinchenko’s escape until it was reported to Yahoo News.
“The Russians have no idea. They have no idea he’s here. You can be the one to tell them,” Aleksander Tots, deputy head of Estonia’s security police, told Weiss.
Estonian authorities arrested Zinchenko in 2017. For four years in Estonia, he was engaged in surveillance of objects essential to national security, as well as monitoring the movement of Estonian troops in the country. He was sentenced to five years in prison for espionage for Russia, but in 2018 Zinchenko was extradited to Russia, swapping him for businessman Raivo Susi, whom Russia had sentenced to 12 years in maximum security prison for espionage.
In October of this year, the Estonian government gave Yahoo News exclusive access to Zinchenko, who gave Weiss a four-hour interview in which he revealed that he was driven back to Estonia both by the brutality of Kremlin at home and abroad, both from Estonia’s violence. humane treatment of him, an enemy agent.
Zinchenko said that in Estonia, before his arrest and during his trial, he saw that the law works much better in that country than in Russia, while Vladimir Putin’s Russian regime has all the aspects of totalitarianism.
He said that after returning to Russia in 2018, the situation changed dramatically for the worse and he realized he could no longer stay there.
Zinchenko’s family also arrived in Estonia. When asked whether the Estonian security police helped organize their escape to Estonia, Zinchenko said no. Tots did not answer this question.
