The professor had forwarded information to Russia’s military intelligence service “about the political situation and elections in Estonia, allied relations and integration,” the prosecutor added. “This was information that he had access to due to his position as a researcher as well as publicly available information that Russia could use to threaten Estonia.”
The court said the professor had been cooperating with Moscow “for a long time.”
Reports of Russian espionage activities targeting EU countries have increased in recent months, prompting concern among the bloc’s leaders.
Earlier on Tuesday, German Interior Minister Nancy Faeser warned espionage and cyberattacks are on the rise in Germany as she presented an annual report by the country’s domestic intelligence agency.
“The threat to our democracy from espionage, sabotage, disinformation and cyberattacks has reached a new dimension,” she said, adding that the Kremlin is now waging a more intense, many-sided campaign against Berlin, conducting espionage while also carrying out cyberattacks and disinformation operations.
On Monday, the Wall Street Journal reported that two Russians who posed as Argentinian immigrants in Slovenia used the country — which is in both NATO and the EU — as a base to travel to nearby European countries to pay sources and communicate orders from Moscow before they were arrested in December 2022.
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