The Russian and Estonian intelligence services have exchanged two men accused by each country of spying for the other, in a rare public example of what is commonly referred to as a ‘spy-swap’. The exchange took place on Saturday on a bridge over the Piusa River, which forms part of the Russian-Estonian border, separating Estonia’s Polva County from Russia’s Pskov Oblast.
Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB)
said that it had handed to the Estonian government a man going by the
name of Eston Kohver. Last year, Estonian officials accused
Moscow of abducting Kohver, an employee of the Internal Security
Service of Estonia, known as KaPo, from the vicinity of Luhamaa, a
border-crossing facility in southeastern Estonia. But the Russian
government said that Kohver had been captured by the FSB on Russian soil
and was found to be carrying a firearm, cash and spy equipment
“relating to the gathering of intelligence”.
Kohver was exchanged for Aleksei Dressen, a former Estonian KaPo officer who was arrested
in February 2012 along with his wife, Viktoria Dressen, for allegedly
spying for Russia. The Dressens were caught carrying classified Estonian
government documents as Viktoria was attempting to board a flight to
Moscow. Aleksei Dressen was sentenced
to 16 years in prison, while Viktoria Dressen to six, for divulging
state secrets. Russian media have since reported that Dressen had been
secretly working for Russian counterintelligence since the early 1990s.
Soon after the spy- swap, KaPo Director Arnold Sinisalu told
a press conference that the exchange had been agreed with the FSB
following “long-term negotiations”, during which it became clear that
“both sides were willing to find a suitable solution”. Kohver, sitting
alongside Sinisalu, told reporters that it felt “good to be back in my
homeland”.
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