“During 20 years of work in the Estonian security police service, Dressen obtained and delivered to Moscow a colossal amount of valuable documents regarding secret operations of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency and the British MI6 against Russian Federation from the position of the Baltic countries”, he said.
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“There were negotiations, long negotiations, between institutions and the conclusion was that there would be an exchange”, Estonian Interior Minister Hanno Pevkur told journalists after welcoming Kohver back home. I would like to thank all those to whom my welfare was important, everyone who supported me.
According to Interfax, which broke the news, the prisoners were swapped at the Russian-Estonian border in southeastern Estonia.
Estonia had maintained that Kohver was abducted in September 2014 and was in custody in a Moscow prison.
Kohver’s defense lawyer, Mark Feigin, said the swap was “organized on the political level” and was timed to boost Russia’s image ahead of President Vladimir Putin’s speech to the UN General Assembly on September 28.
In a tweet, Feigin wrote: “It’s all happening ahead of Putin’s visit to the United Nations tomorrow”.
But Estonian authorities and the European Union say Mr Kohver was kidnapped at gunpoint from inside Estonia by a Russian special forces’ snatch squad that used smoke grenades and expertly jammed all local official radio frequencies. He was sentenced to 16 years in prison.
“We are first giving Eston the opportunity to reunite with his family, we will provide more detailed information this afternoon”, the minister said.
On August 19, the regional court of the northwest Russian city of Pskov sentenced Kohver to 15 years in jail.
Russia’s relations with the West have hit their lowest point since the Cold War over the conflict in Ukraine, leading to a spike in spying claims.
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Russian Federation has exchanged an Estonian who had been convicted of espionage last month for a former Estonian policeman convicted of treason for passing state secrets to Moscow.
