An Estonian court sentenced a man with dual Estonian and Russian citizenship to 15 years in prison for treason yesterday, DPA reported, BTA reported.
The convict was found guilty of setting fire to a car with Ukrainian license plates in the city of Tartu in the spring of last year. According to the court, he did this on orders from Russia.
According to the indictment, the man wrote the name of a political organization in Estonia on the hood of the car to create the false impression that the organization was connected to the act. He filmed the car being set on fire and later posted the footage on social media.
According to the Estonian prosecutor's office, this was a planned attack, which is part of Russia's hybrid attacks against Estonia. The attack was intended to sow division in Estonian society and to intimidate the Ukrainian community in Estonia, the prosecutor's office said.
The man was also reported to have been carrying out espionage activities. He spied on a former Russian officer who had fled to Lithuania and collected information about NATO military activities in Latvia. The plan was to pass the information to Russian intelligence services, a spokesman for the prosecutor's office said.