[url]http://news.err.ee/v/politics/5cbe0a4d-b999-4f55-a8d5-375c2f090a19/kohver-released-and-back-in-estonia[/url]
[quote]Abducted Estonian official Eston Kohver has been exchanged for Aleksei Dressen, a former Estonian Internal Security Service employee imprisoned in Estonia for espionage for Russia.[/quote]
Who kidnapped him? It does not say in the article or did i miss anything?
[QUOTE=Bucketboy;48764869]Who kidnapped him? It does not say in the article or did i miss anything?[/QUOTE]
He was abducted a year ago on the Estonian side of the border by FSB agents.
[url]http://news.err.ee/v/b5a7a5ab-f300-4ef2-8d4a-7f21941c53ef[/url]
[QUOTE=PrusseLusken;48765154]Good, I'm glad he's returned safely.
On the other hand, how the hell is Russia getting away with this?[/QUOTE]
Because Estonia is a small country that the US and Western Europe don't really care about.
Estonia is a NATO member state. I would hope the other members of NATO would care.
But sadly I don't know what response would be the appropriate one. It was condemned diplomatically. But short of stationing military forces on the border with Russia, there isn't much more than that. And any military actions would just play into the hands of Putin who wants the Russian population to see US/NATO as a threat. Even the minor stuff NATO is doing now with stationing of US hardware is making it easier for Putin to justify to the Russian population his moves with the Russian military.
I almost forgot about him.
Welcome back, I guess.
[QUOTE=TornadoAP;48765222]Because Estonia is a small country that the US and Western Europe don't really care about.[/QUOTE]
Actually it's in their best interests to care since we're essentially a several country sized barrier/invasion early detection service.
Estonians say he wasnt a spy and was on Estonian border; Russians say that he had a gun, 5k in euros and was on the Russian side
This is why nobody outside two countries cared.
[editline]26th September 2015[/editline]
[QUOTE=PrusseLusken;48765154]Good, I'm glad he's returned safely.
On the other hand, how the hell is Russia getting away with this?[/QUOTE]
The same way USA is getting away with Gitmo.
As far as I know there was no third party investigation so the question is if he was a spy or not is literally word of Estonia vs word of Russia, and you can choose favourites if you want but it's not exactly something NATO or anyone else can make decisions based on.
[editline]27th September 2015[/editline]
Lets be honest, if he was spying for Estonia, they wouldn't have admitted that, would they?
pretty much what i said ^
[QUOTE=TornadoAP;48765222]Because Estonia is a small country that the US and Western Europe don't really care about.[/QUOTE]
obviously we did care enough to backchannel negotiate an exchange because its a pretty good chance some western country was involved in the negotiations. not every problem has to or should be solved with dickwaving, plus NATO is there for military purposes, not counter-espionage purposes
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