There is nothing new in Russian intelligence. Russia has always done this. History is full of thousands of spies, thousands of traitors who collaborated with Russia. Why? Everyone has their reasons, but it’s not easy to find them.
“In terms of magnitude, it can be said that hundreds of people are working directly against Estonia. If you add these networks, which technically help organize cyber attacks or wiretaps, this number can approach a thousand,” said Arnold Sinisalu, former Director General of the Defense Police Board.
“Among officials of security agencies it is said that they collect information like a vacuum cleaner, everything ends there. Another question is how this information is processed, how it is used. Often this information can even be, for example, at the Delphi level, that Delfi reflects, but this is put together with other information, which for example is obtained through cyber intelligence, information on the computer when it is hacked, telephone calls, telephone interceptions, which the Russians also manage to do quite well. And then the mosaic to decide whether to intervene in a process, whether to start recruiting some particular person. It may not lead to recruitment, the weakness of some people is (simply) exploited to make a fool of someone;” Sinisalu said.
Estonian law enforcement agencies capture some of them from time to time. Earlier this week we learned that the defense police arrested Vyacheslav Morozov, professor of international political theory at the University of Tartu, on charges of espionage against Estonia.
“I don’t know him closely, I just met him at conferences and I’m not one of the many who say they’ve always known him or that they’ve known from the beginning or at least that they’ve known for a long time (that this is a person who works for the Russian intelligence). In my opinion, he left the impression of a relatively ordinary Russian specialist working in the West,” said researcher Ivo Juurvee of the International Center for Defense Studies, who was previously familiar with Morozov.
A spy doesn’t have “spy” written on his forehead. After the news of Morozov’s arrest, a storm broke out on social media. Many foreign researchers who met him could not believe that a professor outwardly critical of Putin could be a spy. Many doubted that the Estonian security authorities had suddenly made a mistake.
Sinisalu said Estonian law enforcement agencies arrest people suspected of espionage or treason only if the evidence against them is overwhelming.
“In matters of counter-espionage, there is no point in going, as they say, for cranes with an axe. You still need to be relatively safe and the evidence needs to be checked several times. In these matters, taking risks would be to bring such feedback negative that the security establishment does not want to take such a risk. We will go out if there is more than 90% certainty in the evidence. Even this 10% is being tried to be excluded,” Sinisalu said.
With a very high probability, Morozov’s conviction and imprisonment will now follow. If Morozov was on the payroll of the Russian special services from the beginning, he can count on a replacement for him.
“One thing with which it is possible to make some assessments is how quickly or for whom the Russian team is ready to start the exchange process. As they say, it is started not for every match, but for who needs to be shown their colleagues around the world or right here in Estonia, that we will take care of you,” said Andres Anvelt, former director of the Central Criminal Police.
Being a professor is actually a very good cover for a spy: Morozov is not the first scientist to be captured in Estonia, the security control is not very high, while the access to information and people is excellent.
“For example, even a journalist is a relatively good cover. There is nothing strange in a journalist, a researcher or, for example, a businessman, if he travels a lot, communicates with many people and is interested in many topics. himself a scientist – I think as a journalist this experience is the same – people talk and share their opinions with pleasure,” Juurvee said.
“It is clear that the teacher sees the students who are most successful, in whom he sees prospects or who have problems. Secondly, from what can be seen from public sources, citizen Morozov also participated in various pan-European projects. I think that this also offers a strategic interest to Russia, who are the key actors who, for example, prepare reflection papers, write research articles on the basis of which some political decisions can be made in capitals, and also those researchers who work specifically on these projects , perhaps to create some kind of access into the countries. Nor can it be ruled out that Morozov had specific tasks to develop Russian propaganda activity in the course of his research,” Sinisalu said.
However, we should not start tightening restrictions on universities.
“We are a democratic country and I think that in a democratic country the special services should not consider universities as a potential object of risk. Total processing of universities – this is a feature of authoritarian countries and I don’t see any practical need for this;” Sinisalu said.
Compared to other countries, Estonia is actually successful in catching spies and traitors. Part of this could be the decision to go public.
“Estonia continues to publish this information, which since last year has also been incorporated into the basis of our security policy. Although, in reality, Estonia has adopted a policy in this direction since 2008, when in our case we had Herman Simmi,” Giurista said.
Of course, there is never any certainty that all suspicions of espionage or treason will become public.
“There can also be counter-recruitment. This is a completely normal activity. Of course, this is never said publicly, but it is one way to take advantage of such a situation. Another way is in the country of Estonia , in the European country world in general, that a person, if he works in an important place in an official post, the levels of proof are different: either prove your treason in a criminal case or prove that you have problems with the security check. You can’t get a state secret permit, you can’t continue to work in a certain position and so on,” Anvelt said.
“Of course, we must admit that in order to create the illusion that we will succeed in catching 100% of all traitors or spies, it would be naive to say so. But we can always do better. We know that there are more of these people. This knowledge is always somewhere in the back of our heads,” Sinisalu said.
2024-01-21 19:17:00
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