Media Reports: Latvian MEP Turns Out To Be Russian Intelligence Agent
- 29.01.2024, 13:25
The woman had two handlers.
Member of the European Parliament Tatjana Zdanoka turned out to be an agent of Russian intelligence and, from 2004 to 2017, was subordinate to two different handlers from the aggressor country. The politician openly defended the interests of Moscow for many years both in Riga and Strasbourg.
The Latvian MP's connection to Russian intelligence was confirmed by emails in which investigators discovered Zdanoka's explicit and detailed reports to her handlers about her work as a European legislator. This was reported by The Insider.
During the investigation, it was possible to establish that the work of the Latvian deputy in the interests of the Kremlin was connected with the encouragement of pro-Kremlin sentiments in her native Baltic region. In particular, one of the emails was about a personal meeting in Moscow or Brussels between Zdanoka and her Russian handler.
She also requested funding from Russian sources to support her political activities in Latvia and the European Parliament. Moreover, journalists found out that the deputy asked for money to organize a rally “in honor of the victory of the Red Army” in World War II.
It is noteworthy that the investigators tried to find out details about connections with Russian intelligence from Zdanoka herself. However, she responded that journalists are using information that they “by definition should not have.”
Despite avoiding answering, the journalists even managed to find out some details about the Russian handlers of the Latvian deputy. The Insider confirmed that two of Zdanoka’s curators were officers of the Russian FSB. Judging by the emails, her first supervisor was an FSB veteran from the department in St. Petersburg, 74-year-old Dmitry Gladey, who supervised the “deputy” from 2004 to 2013. After 2013, Zdanoka maintained regular contacts with another FSB officer, Sergei Beltyukov.
Later, Zdanoka admitted that she knew Dmitry Gladey, but claimed that she had crossed paths with him back in the 1970s at a tourist base in the North Caucasus, where they learned to ski. The deputy also denies that she knew that Gladey was a Russian spy.
It is worth noting that in 2014, Zdanoka visited the Autonomous Republic of Crimea to act as an “international observer” at the so-called “referendum” that the aggressor country Russia organized for the annexation of the Ukrainian peninsula. Two years later, Zdanoka went to Syria, where she held negotiations with dictator Bashar al-Assad. At the time of the MEP's visit to Damascus, Russia's direct military intervention was already supporting the Assad regime in its fight for survival against Western-backed rebel forces.
Then the European Parliament refused to pay for Zdanoka’s trip, since Assad and his entourage were under EU sanctions. In addition, on March 2, 2022, Zdanoka was one of 13 deputies who voted against the European Parliament resolution condemning the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
Let us remind you that an agent of the Main Directorate of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces settled in the capital of Belgium, Brussels, just a few kilometers from the offices of the European Commission and NATO. Living in the Belgian capital, Viktor Labin supplies the Russian military-industrial complex with coordinate measuring machines, which are indispensable in the production of weapons.