A court in Estonia has sentenced a resident of Narva to five years in prison after finding him guilty of spying for Russia. This is reported by representatives of the court and the prosecutor’s office of the country on 25 September.
According to the investigation, the man named Igor Lobin had been passing data to the Russian FSB since 2017 about the organisation of Estonia’s defence, its internal security, the activities of security agencies, the training of the Estonian Defence Forces and its volunteer vigilantes, as well as the transition of schools to education in the Estonian language.
Taavi Narits, deputy director of the country’s Security Police, told the Postimees that Lobin was a technical inspector. He had no access to confidential information, but he travelled to Russia regularly and corresponded from a separate phone with a handler whose contact was signed as a fishing tackle seller. He added that Lobin received minimal reward and “was a classic ideological agent”.
In July, a county court in the Estonian town of Viru found Pavel Kapustin, a Russian citizen and resident of Narva, guilty of espionage activities against Estonia and sentenced him to 6.5 years in prison.