TALLINN: An Estonian court on Wednesday said it had sentenced a journalist who used to work for Russian state media to six years in prison for treason.
The court found that Svetlana Burceva had worked with a reserve officer of Russia’s FSB security service in “activities against the independence and sovereignty” of Estonia.
“The sentence was six years in prison,“ the Harju county district court said in a statement.
Burceva, referred to as Burtseva by Russian media, has 30 days to appeal.
The court said that she and FSB reserve officer Roman Romachev planned “to publish a variety of writings aimed at implementing the Russian Federation’s foreign and security policy activities”.
A book they published about hybrid warfare was “a propagandist work that lacks the hallmarks of independent analysis”, the court said.
Estonia, an EU and NATO member, has a large Russian-speaking minority.
Its already tense ties with Moscow have deteriorated dramatically over Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
Burceva acquired Estonian citizenship in 1994.
She had been working with Estonian online sites controlled by Russia’s Rossiya Segodnya media group since 2017.
She was detained on February 28, 2024 and the court said that her sentence would apply from the day of her detention.
