Foreign Minister of Estonia Marina Kaljurand | EPA Estonia’s limited options for freeing kidnapped officer A small Baltic country doesn’t have much in its arsenal against an uncooperative Russia.

Estonia has one main foreign policy goal: figuring out how to get intelligence officer Eston Kohver released from Russian custody a year after he was seized and several weeks after he was sentenced to 15 years in prison.

“Eston Kohver is my number one priority,” Estonia’s new foreign minister, Marina Kaljurand, told POLITICO. “He’s the only case of an Estonian citizen being abducted by another country.”

Kohver, an officer with the Estonian Internal Security Service (KAPO), had been investigating cross-border crime and corruption when he was seized at gunpoint on Estonian territory. Russia’s FSB internal security agency does not deny that its officers captured him but argues that Kohver was taken on the Russian side of the border and that he was spying.

Ever since Kohver’s disappearance, the Estonian foreign ministry and its intelligence services have been working behind the scenes on his behalf, raising the issue bilaterally with Russia. The problem is that Estonia, with 1.3 million people, can’t do much to exert pressure on its behemoth neighbor.

“The Eston Kohver case is not just about Estonian-Russian relations," said Marko Mihkelson, chairman of the Estonian parliament's defense committee. "You have to see it in the wider perspective of relations between Russia and NATO and the EU, which are at a low point not because of anything Estonia has done but because of what Russia has done."

KAPO appears to be treating Kohver’s abduction as a hostage situation, where challenging the hostage taker brings the risk of dramatic and irreversible action.

Despite expressions of support from EU foreign policy chief Federica Mogherini, who denounced Kohver’s abduction and detention as a violation of international law, Kaljurand doesn’t have many big power options. Her goal is to simply arrange a public meeting with the Russians to discuss the case.

“I’ve asked for a meeting with Foreign Minister [Sergei] Lavrov on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly,” she said. “He’ll be there, so it makes sense to meet there.”

Kaljurand, a career diplomat appointed foreign minister in July, has also directed her staff to explore legal options. The foreign ministry is investigating how the Convention of the Council of Europe can be applied to Kohver’s case. But, Kaljurand said, Estonia is not planning to take Russia to court.

Indeed, pushing Russia hard may backfire. KAPO appears to be treating Kohver’s abduction as a hostage situation, where challenging the hostage taker brings the risk of dramatic and irreversible action. For at least the past couple of years, the FSB has appeared to be conducting a vendetta against KAPO, motivated partly by the fact that the Estonians are accomplished spycatchers, having caught at least four Russian moles in the past six years.

“Estonian authorities have traditionally chosen to announce cases when Russian moles have been caught by KAPO, and this has probably made it more difficult for FSB to recruit new personnel in Estonia”, said Martin Hurt, a Swedish-Estonian former armed forces official in both countries who is now a senior fellow at ICDS, a Tallinn defense and security policy think tank.

“Kohver’s abduction was a blow to KAPO as the organization had to make a damage assessment and probably reorganize part of their work. On the other hand, it also discredits Russia and places it in the category of pariah countries like North Korea that are also known for abducting foreign citizens.”

Making Kohver’s recovery more difficult, an Estonian investigation — details of which were seen by POLITICO — uncovered evidence of FSB plans to abduct an Estonian officer long before Kohver was snatched. The plans had nothing to do with Kohver personally, the FSB instead intending to abduct any KAPO officer, according to the investigation.

With legal action being ruled out by Kaljurand, all that remains for Estonia is to try to ramp up public pressure on Moscow.

An emergency resolution was approved by the European Parliament Thursday, condemning Kohver's detention and sentencing and calling for his immediate release. The question is whether that's the kind of action that will make Moscow change its strategy.