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Sunday, September 27, 2015

Russia and Estonia 'exchange spies' Saturday Sep 26,2015

 The swap taking place on a bridge separating the two countries
Russia and Estonia have exchanged two convicted spies over a bridge separating the countries.

Estonian security official Eston Kohver was sentenced to 15 years in a Russian jail last month


Eston Kohver was swapped for Aleksei Dressen, who was imprisoned in Estonia in 2012 on charges of spying for Moscow.

Eston Kohver's case provoked a diplomatic row, with Estonia and the EU insisting he was abducted from Estonian soil, a charge Russia denied.

Aleksei Dressen was a former officer in Estonia's security police, who was found guilty of passing secret data to Russia for years after Estonia's independence in 1991.

Aleksei Dressen had been arrested in 2012 along with his wife, Victoria Dressen, who was given a suspended sentence.

According to the Russian Federal Security Service, the swap took place on a bridge over the Piusa River that separates Russia's western Pskov region and Estonia's Polva county.

Note

Relations between Russia and its Baltic neighbours have been uneasy since they joined Nato and the European Union in 2004.

They have worsened since the crisis in Ukraine, where Russia is accused of arming separatists in the east - which Moscow denies.

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