Baltic States – CIS, Estonia, EU – Baltic States, Legislation, Security, USA

Newsweek writes in the article that focuses on the German foreign intelligence service BND, that Estonia’s KaPo, "despite having the unenviable task of defending its population of 1.3 million against neighbouring Russia, has established itself as one of Europe’s top counter-espionage agencies and has, particularly following the embarrassing unmasking of long-time Russian mole Herman Simm, shown remarkable skill in unmasking Russian spies."

Newsweek said that for a long time, though, KaPo’s warnings about Russia’s aggressive nature were met with scepticism. “But recent events have proven us right,” Martin Arpo, says deputy director-general of KaPo. “Russia has been preparing similar actions for years. Russia hasn’t changed – international perception has.”

"The fact that foreign media writes in such a positive tone about Estonian state institutions and especially the special services, it is very high recognition," said Interior Ministry Undersecretary of the Domestic Security policy Erkki Koort in an interview to Kuku Radio.

He added that other European counter-intelligence services do not have such a big amount of captured spies as Estonia does. "The reason is not that we are attacked so much via intelligence interest, but others just have not caught them," added Koort.

He said that in Europe in the early 1990s it seemed that Russia no longer poses a great threat, and therefore Russia was not paid so much attention. Spotlight was on the fight against terrorism. Ukrainian events however, show that Estonia has focused in the right place with counterintelligence activities.

The practice in Estonia is to reveal the caught spy to the public and bring the person to justice, but other countries often hush up the matter. "Only a few scandals connected to the America intelligence have become public in European countries, but nothing connected to in Russia, and this is a little unsettling," Koort said.