Latvian MEP Tatjana Ždanoka collaborated with Russia's Federal Security Service
Riga, Latvia (Svidomi) — Bellingcat and The Insider, with the participation of Estonian, Latvian and Swedish journalists, have published an investigation that claims Latvian MEP Tatjana Ždanoka was in active correspondence with Russian intelligence officers and sent them reports on her activities.
The journalists found that Ždanoka worked under the supervision of the handlers from the Federal Security Service's Fifth Service (the Service for Operational Information and International Relations. It is this service that oversees the FSS's relations with other countries — ed.) since at least 2004.
The first letters to Gladey in Ždanoka's hacked box are dated 3 October 2005. At that time, Ždanoka sent two attachments, one of which was an unpublished draft agenda for a conference in Tallinn and Narva sponsored by two parliamentary blocs - the Green faction of the European Parliament and the European Free Alliance. The second attachment is a draft press release about the conference.
Since 2005, the MP had been corresponding with her handler, Dmitry Gladey, an officer of the St Petersburg FSS department. In these letters, she spoke about her activities in Europe. She organised a public hearing in the European Parliament on the attitude of the Estonian authorities to the violent protests in Tallinn after the removal of a monument to a Soviet soldier. She also launched the radio programme Russian School Time, which warned Russians living in Latvia about "possible problems associated with sending children from Russian families to Latvian schools". She was also preparing an upcoming exhibition at the European Parliament entitled "Russians of Latvia" to present ethnic Russians as the true indigenous population of Latvia.
In one of her letters, Ždanoka asked Gladey for about $6,000 to purchase St George's ribbons (a Russian propaganda Communist regime symbol, banned in Ukraine — ed.) and other paraphernalia for Victory Day celebration in 2010.
The MEP does not deny her acquaintance with Gladey. She claims that she met him in Europe and Moscow, but did not know about his work for Russia's special services. The meetings are also mentioned in the correspondence between Ždanoka and Hladey, but the purpose and nature of their private conversations were never mentioned in the letters.
In 2013, Tatjana Ždanoka began to collaborate with another curator, Sergey Krasin. They were virtually introduced by Dmitry Gladey. Later, she sent him intelligence reports.
As the journalists found out, the name Sergey Krasin was used to conceal an FSS officer, Sergey Beltyukov, a current FSS officer from St. Petersburg. In 1993, Beltyukov received a Security Clearance Form Form-2, one of the highest categories of secrecy, which allows the holder to travel abroad only with the permission of the FSS.
In 2014, Ždanoka applied to the Belgian Embassy in Moscow for a Schengen visa for another Russian intelligence officer, Artem Kureev, who supervised Sergey Seredenko, convicted by an Estonian court for anti-state activities.
Ždanoka's MEP mandate expires this year. Earlier, she was expelled from the European Green faction after refusing to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine.
Alice Bah Kuhnke, MEP from the Swedish Green Party, said the news of Zhdanok's work for Russian special services was "terrible, but not surprising".
