Member of the European Parliament from Latvia Tatyana Zhdanok has been interacting with FSB officers since at least 2004 and helping them enter the EU.
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The Insider, Delfi and Re: Baltica spoke about this in their investigation.
Investigators learned that Zhdanok collaborated with the FSB through leaked correspondence from the deputy’s email. Based on the text of the letters, in 2005 Zhdanok, who by that time was already a member of the European Parliament, communicated with Dmitry Gladey, an employee of the St. Petersburg department of the FSB, and regularly met with him in Europe and Russia.
As an example, journalists cite the MEP’s letter dated September 8, 2007, which she allegedly wrote to Gladay a week after the personal meeting in Moscow. In it, the woman apologizes for not being able to send him the “promised information” from Strasbourg, and then talks about the work done.
In particular, she informs the FSB officer about the “organization of hearings in the European Parliament” dedicated to protests in Tallinn due to the relocation of a monument to a Soviet soldier.
In addition, in one of her letters, Zhdanok told Gladei about the launch of radio programs “Russian School Hour,” the task of which was “to inform parents about possible problems that children from Russian families may encounter if they are sent to a Latvian school or kindergarten.”
The deputy also reported to a Russian intelligence officer about the publications in the media following the events and plans to hold an exhibition “Russians of Latvia” in the European Parliament.
In April 2010, Zhdanok sent Gladei a draft plan to promote Victory Day celebrations in Latvia. In the same letter, the deputy asked the intelligence officer to allocate funds for her to purchase St. George ribbons and create a documentary film about this event.
In 2013, another recipient of Zhdanok was a man named Sergei Krasin – according to investigators, this is a pseudonym, and his real name is Sergei Beltyukov, an active FSB officer from St. Petersburg.
In 2014, the deputy, as investigators found, helped another FSB officer, Artem Kuraev, obtain a Schengen visa to visit the European Parliament. To do this, Zhdanok submitted an application to the Belgian Embassy in Moscow.
Zhdanok herself told investigators that she met Dmitry Gladey “in the early 1970s at a camp site in the North Caucasus, where they learned to ski.” According to her, she was not aware that she was communicating with FSB officers. She did not deny the authenticity of the letters, but did not comment on their contents.
Source: Racurs
I am David Wyatt, a professional writer and journalist for Buna Times. I specialize in the world section of news coverage, where I bring to light stories and issues that affect us globally. As a graduate of Journalism, I have always had the passion to spread knowledge through writing.