Estonia launches Russian-language TV channel, seeks balance

Russia’s safety and security resource said Saturday it swapped Estonian cop Eston Kohver, sentenced under for spying, to have an locked down Russian monitoring, within a cross-border join swap having its Baltic neighbour.

The move comes as tensions between the tiny North Atlantic Treaty Organisation member and neighbouring Russian Federation have surged since Moscow’s annexation of Crimea from Ukraine past year and the ongoing conflict in eastern Ukraine between pro-Russia rebels and the government. Estonia said he was abducted on the Estonian side of the frontier but Russian Federation said he had been caught on its territory carrying a pistol and ammunition, 5,000 euros in cash and spying equipment.

His sentiments were echoed by the European Union’s foreign affairs chief, Federica Mogherini, said Kohver’s abduction and detention violated global law.

“Have [Russian-speaking] people here in Estonia really been participating in the public sphere?”

Kohver, an officer when using the Estonian Internal Security Service, was at demanded to effectively 15 existence in penal complex on August 19 with a closed-door burden once convicted of spying and explicitly queering the Russian outer edge.

Russian news agency RIA cited a source in the FSB as saying Dressen had worked for Russian counter-intelligence since the 1990s, transferring information about US and British spies working in the Baltic countries.

The swap took place on Saturday on a bridge over the Piusa River that separates Russia’s western Pskov region and Estonia’s Polva county, after which Kohver was taken to Tallinn to make a statement before taking a “vacation” to reunite with family.

He applied that likely it was also “good to return inside my homeland”.