The Russian independent investigative media The Insider made public this Monday the electronic correspondence of the Latvian MEP Tatiana Zdanoka with Russian citizens, alleged officials of the FSB, the Russian intelligence services, heirs of the KGB. According to the publication, this cooperation began at least two decades ago. The politician, who leads the Russian Union of Latvia and in the past has defended rapprochement with Moscow’s positions, denies having links to Russian espionage.
The investigation, based on hacked emails from politicians, involved The Insider and the research group Bellingcat, both declared “foreign agents” and “undesirable organizations” in Russia, as well as the Latvian portals Re: Baltica and the Estonian Delfi.ee. , and the Swedish newspaper Expressen. Zdanoka regularly sent reports on his activities to his FSB contacts, and on at least one occasion requested funding. The MEP assured The Insider that one of those contacts is a youth friendship.
A member of the European Parliament since 2004, his pro-Russian statements have always attracted attention and raised suspicions. His formation, the Russian Union, receives its political capital from the significant Russian minority of the small Baltic republic.
She has regularly accused Latvia and Estonia of persecuting the Russian inhabitants of these countries, which gained independence from Moscow after the breakup of the USSR in 1991.
According to The Insider, the two contacts in the emails worked as FSB intelligence officials. With the first, Dimitri Gladei, cooperation began in 2004 and ended in 2013. That year Zdanoka began to communicate with Sergei Beltiukov.
Zdanoka admitted to The Insider that he had known Gladéi since the 1970s, when as young people they became friends while learning to ski in the North Caucasus. But he assured that he did not know that he was an intelligence official. The Insider verified, however, that he worked for the FSB in St. Petersburg and had access to secret Russian documents.
Regarding the second, the politician claimed not to remember it. The Insider indicates that he used a pseudonym, Sergei Krasin.
The authors of the investigation traced Zdanoka’s correspondence with Gladéi back to 2005, when she sent him documents about planned activities in Estonia. Judging by the correspondence, Zdanoka met Gladei in Europe and Moscow quite regularly.
The content of the correspondence, as a rule, consisted of Zdanoka’s stories about his activities in Europe, associated with criticism of the authorities of the Baltic countries for their policy towards Russia and the Russian-speaking residents of these countries.
In one of the letters Zdanoka requests funds, about $6,000 to buy St. George ribbons and other items to celebrate Victory Day against Nazi Germany in World War II in 2010.
In a comment for the Latvian edition of Re:Baltica, the MEP did not deny the authenticity of the correspondence. She but she declined to comment on their content, noting that access to the emails was improperly obtained with the help of hackers.
Zdanoka was born in the capital of Latvia, Riga, in 1950. Between 1971 and 1991 he was a member of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Since the end of the USSR, he has been involved in politics in defense of the Russian minority.
His term in the European Parliament ends this year. In 2022 she was excluded from the parliamentary group of The Greens / European Free Alliance after refusing to condemn the entry of the Russian Army into Ukraine in February of that year and with which a war conflict that has lasted almost two years began.
