Incident follows Russian kidnapping of Estonian agent, pointing to heightened tensions between Moscow and Tallinn

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Two former Soviet security officials have been arrested crossing into Estonia, the second major incident between Russia and its Baltic neighbour in the past weeks.



In early September an Estonian security agent was abducted at gunpoint and taken to Russia, where he is awaiting trial after being accused of spying.

Last Sunday two Russians, reportedly identified as former KGB officers, were held by Estonian border guards when their boat allegedly crossed the border on the Narva River near Lake Peipsi.



The men, Mihhail Suhoshin, 64, and Alexander Ladur, 54, are being held on charges of resisting arrest and illegally entering Estonia.

The incidents point to heightened tensions between the two countries.

“The ex-KGB guys caught on the Narva River are ‘ex’ and may have been merely fishing,” said Kalev Stoicescu, a research fellow and Russia expert at the Tallinn based International Centre for Defence Studies. “But the Russians are testing all types of borders, on land, at sea and in the air space of many Nato and EU countries including Estonia. They do this to provoke, but also to test reactions both technically and politically.”



Estonia’s eastern border, renowned for smuggling and spy games, was the scene of turn with the abduction of security official Eston Kohver on 5 September.



Kohver, an officer of the Kaitsepolitsei or KaPo, Estonia’s counter intelligence agency, was held at gunpoint near the Luhamaa border checkpoint in remote south-eastern Estonia carrying a large amount of cash and a firearm.

There has been speculation that he was meeting a Russian informant when he was snatched by the FSB, Russia’s intelligence service. He is currently awaiting trial on espionage charges in Moscow, and faces decades in prison.

“The Kohver abduction was possibly political and symbolic, as it happened the same day as the Nato summit in Wales and a day after Obama’s visit to Estonia,” Stoicescu said. “But there may be more prosaic reasons connected to the FSB’s own relations with the underworld and smuggling across the Estonian frontier.”

A bone of contention in the Kohver case is what side of the border he was on when he was apprehended. Estonia says he was kidnapped from home soil, while Russia claims that he was caught across the border trying to corrupt a Russian official.

The uncertainty surrounding the case is heightened because the exact location of the Estonian/Russian border is not clear. A final border treaty has yet to be ratified, and the de facto border runs much further to the west than the internationally recognised border agreed upon during Estonia’s short-lived inter-war independence in 1920.

With Estonia one of the most sparsely populated countries in the EU, the border is largely rural and in many places densely thicketed and overgrown. The border is porous and lightly guarded. Lack of resources means improving border security is difficult.

“There are constant attempts to smuggle illegal immigrants, alcohol, tobacco, and light arms into Estonia. Given the present state of affairs concerning the border control, I assume that only a portion of the smuggling is actually prevented or detected,” Stoicescu says.