The Latvian Member of the European Parliament, Tetiana Zhdanok (Russian Union of Latvia), has allegedly reported on her activities to employees of the Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) since at least 2005 and sought funds from them for various events. This information comes from a joint investigation by The Insider, Estonian Delfi, Latvian Re:Baltica, and Swedish Expressen.
According to hacked email correspondence of Zhdanok, in 2005, she was already exchanging emails with her curator, at that time a St. Petersburg FSB officer named Dmytro Hladei, who continued to work with Zhdanok until 2013. Currently, Hladei is 74 years old.
Later on, Hladei started forwarding her reports to a new anonymous email address [email protected]. Subsequently, he virtually introduced her to an individual named Serhiy Krasin, to whom she began directly sending her intelligence reports. "Krasin" was successfully identified using the unique password of the owner of the email account [email protected], which leaked online. This password was also associated with a phone number belonging to Serhiy Beltyukov, an active FSB officer from St. Petersburg.
According to the investigation, another FSB operative worked with Zhdanok. This information emerged in 2022 during the trial of Sergey Seredenko, the self-proclaimed "ombudsman of Estonia for human rights," who faced charges of anti-state activities (he was sentenced to 5.5 years in prison). Among the seven FSB officers who supervised Seredenko, there was Artem Kuryeev. The Estonian court ruling mentions that in 2014, Zhdanok filed an application to the Belgian Embassy in Moscow to obtain a Schengen visa for Kuryeev to visit the European Parliament from April 2 to 8, shortly after the occupation of Crimea.
Thus, Zhdanok not only sent reports on her activities to her FSB curators but also used her status as a Member of the European Parliament to assist them in entering the EU territory.
In a comment to Re:Baltica, Zhdanok did not deny the authenticity of the letters but refused to comment on their content. She also denies cooperation with the FSB, claiming that she simply communicated with a friend, Sergey Hladei, whom she met in her youth in 1970 at a resort in the Caucasus.
Latvia's State Security Service (VDD) stated that Latvian legislation provides for punishment for providing assistance to a foreign state or foreign organization in anti-Latvian activities since 2016. However, this law does not have retroactive effect. "Therefore, some episodes cannot be classified as a crime. But one of the letters was sent after 2017. We will evaluate it accurately," said VDD Chairman Normunds Mezviets.
74-year-old Zhdanok was a member of the European Parliament from Latvia from 2004 to 2018 and resumed her role as a Member of the European Parliament in 2019. Due to changes in Latvian legislation, she will not be able to participate in the upcoming elections to the European Parliament in June of this year. At that time, her parliamentary immunity will also expire.
