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Exclusive: Latvian Member of European Parliament is an agent of Russian intelligence, leaked emails confirm
By Christo Grozev,Michael Weiss,Roman Dobrokhotov | 28 January 2024
Tatjana Zdanoka MEP has spent decades openly advocating for Moscow from both Riga and Strasbourg. The Insider can today reveal that Zdanoka was working on behalf of the FSB’s Fifth Service.
Tatjana Zdanoka, a Latvian member of the European Parliament, has been a trusted asset of Russian intelligence since at least 2005, The Insider, in collaboration with the news site Delfi Estonia, Latvia’s Re:Baltica investigative journalism center, and Sweden’s Expressen newspaper, can disclose. Leaked emails between Zdanoka and her two known Russian case officers include explicit, detailed reports from Zdanoka to her handlers describing her work as a European legislator, particularly as those official duties relate to fostering pro-Kremlin sentiment in her native Baltic region. Other correspondence involves arranging physical meetings in Moscow or Brussels between Zdanoka and her Russian handler, along with requests for funding from Russian sources to underwrite her political activities in Latvia and the European Parliament. At least once she requested money for organizing a rally to commemorate the Red Army’s victory in World War II.In an emailed response to The Insider, Zdanoka stated: “I cannot consider this text to be questions put to me because it is based on information that you supposedly have, which by definition, you should not have.”
The Insider has confirmed that Zdanoka’s two documented handlers have been officers of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB), the successor agency to the Soviet-era KGB. According to the emails, her first case officer was a veteran FSB cadre from the St. Petersburg central directorate, Dmitry Gladey, 74, who ran Zdanoka from approximately 2004 to 2013. After 2013, Zdanoka was in regular contact with Sergei Beltyukov, an FSB operative since 1993.
influence, a conclusion supported by her open support for marginal left-wing political parties. Zdanoka’s secret work on behalf of Russian intelligence largely complements her outward politicking: the MEP from Latvia routinely condemns all three Baltic nations for alleged mistreatment of their sizable ethnic Russian diasporas (in Latvia’s case, this ethnic Russian diaspora totals approximately 450,000 people, one quarter of the country’s entire population). The “anti-discrimination” efforts that Zdanoka advocates are often taken up by Kremlin-funded front groups, which take on the guise of non-governmental organizations ostensibly committed to the causes of “human rights,” “anti-fascism,” and “anti-Nazism.” In this context, it is notable that, during Zdanoka’s “election monitoring” efforts in Crimea in 2014, several of her international colleagues were bona fide fascists and neo-Nazis from the United Kingdom, Austria, France and Germany.
A major theme of Zdanoka’s campaigning in the European Parliament has been focused on what she insists is Latvia’s persecution of the Russian language. In March 2015, she took part in an event put on by “Latvia Without Nazism,” an organization Zdanoka co-founded in Belgium and which the chief of VDD, Latvia’s State Security Service, Normunds Mežviets, said was financed by the Kremlin to the tune of €25,000. “It is completely clear that these people are realizing Russia's interests,” Mežviets said at the time.
Zdanoka’s first case officer was Dmitry Gladey, 74, a veteran FSB cadre from St. Petersburg. For decades, Gladey’s public-facing role has been as one of Russia’s representatives to various election monitoring organizations. His most recent role is that of chairman of the International Institute for Monitoring the Development of Democracy. The institute was formed by the Interparliamentary Assembly of the Commonwealth of Independent States in 2006 with the declared purpose to “facilitate the exchange of information, generalization of best practices in the development of democracy and parliamentarism, and observance of citizens’ electoral rights.”
Gladey’s ties to the Russian intelligence are evidenced by his access to “state secrets” and “restricted/controlled travel ”outside of Russia, as The Insider was able to establish based on Gladey’s appearances in a Russian government database hacked by Ukrainian hackers. Leaked travel data from Russia’s Sirena booking database also shows that Gladey frequently traveled on joint bookings with other FSB operatives, which the same government database links explicitly to the agency's Fifth Service.
Read the rest of the report at:
Exclusive: Latvian Member of European Parliament is an agent of Russian intelligence, leaked emails confirm
Tatjana Ždanoka MEP has spent decades openly advocating for Moscow from both Riga and Strasbourg. The Insider can today reveal that Ždanoka was working on behalf of the FSB’s Fifth Service, reporting to two different handlers from at least 2004 to 2017.
theins.press
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