Interior Minister: 'We Face a Very Powerful Force'
Senior government officials warned that Russia's hostile intelligence efforts are real and persistent, after a national security official was arrested on Wednesday for allegedly committing treason.
“I believe our law enforcement agencies have demonstrated their competence by exposing such a serious case of espionage and most likely a case of treason because we face a very powerful force,” Interior Minister Ken-Marti Vaher told ETV.
“We face one of the world's superpowers, which invests enormous financial resources into espionage, agents of influence, and subversion - especially in its neighboring countries [...] But I don't think that any country, including the largest countries, are absolutely protected from similar incidents.”
In 2009, Herman Simm, who is serving a 12.5-year prison sentence for selling classified NATO information to Russia, became the only Estonian to be convicted of treason after Estonia restored national independence in 1991.
Since the Simm affair, Minister Vaher said, Estonian counterintelligence organizations have made substantial improvements both domestically and in international cooperation. In 2009, Parliament also adopted harsher punishments for crimes that undermine the constitutional order - reforms that were also influenced by the 2007 cyber-war, which the government has also blamed on Russia.
Ott Tammik