Estonian Couple arrested for allegedly serving as Russian Spies

Aleksei Dressen, a member of Estonia’s security police for almost two decades, and his wife, Viktoria Dressen, were taken into custody on February 22 at Tallinn Airport for purportedly turning over classified information and state secrets to Russia. According to prosecution spokeswoman Kadri Tammai, Mr. Dressen went to the airport to drop off a folder containing classified data with his wife, who herself was arrested while in the process of boarding a flight headed for Moscow. He had been employed by the domestic security arm of the security police, designated the Kapo. Ms.Tammai disclosed that Mr. Dressen was privy to state secrets but would not give details, other than that his alleged espionage activities spanned a number of years. In addition, Mrs. Dressen supposedly operated as a carrier of classified documents to Russia’s chief intelligence agency, Federal Security Service (FSB), amid reports she was holding such documents at the time of her arrest. A treason conviction for Mr. Dressen could bring imprisonment of 20 years to life.



Since reclaiming independence in 1991, Estonian relations initially with the Soviet Union, and then Russia, have been frosty, and espionage episodes are not uncommon. The current spy affair recalled a scandal in 2008 wherein Herman Simm, then chief of Estonia’s Defense Ministry Security Department, was arrested on charges of handing over domestic and NATO secrets to an unnamed foreign government, subsequently divulged through court documents to be Russia. His conviction came the next year, and he drew a prison term of 12 and a half years. That episode proved to be one of the most devastating in NATO’s annals. Needless to say, the Dressen case has very probably exacerbated longtime Estonian distrust of Russia, and placed even more of a strain on relations between the two countries.