The Estonian Internal Security Service (KAPO) has published its annual threat review. The main conclusion: Russia is not only failing to reduce its intelligence pressure on NATO countries, but is systematically building an infrastructure that would survive any ceasefire.
Last year, KAPO recorded a record number of individuals acting in the interests of Russian intelligence services. In the foreword, Director Margo Palloson emphasized that this does not indicate a growing threat, but rather the effectiveness of preventive work.
The FSB, GRU, and SVR mainly operate from within Russia without traveling abroad. Recruitment takes place at border crossings, via messaging apps, and through social media. Priority targets are individuals with access to information about support for Ukraine, aid logistics, and allied activities.
KAPO paid special attention to the operational units of the FSB border service—an agency rarely mentioned in public reports. Its officers operate in civilian clothing, systematically profile people crossing the border, and recruit informants without any contact with foreign residency networks.
KAPO explicitly states that sanctions are an effective deterrent tool. They have forced Russia to build complex and expensive schemes to obtain Western technologies and components. At the same time, the agency has identified systematic use of Estonian jurisdiction to circumvent restrictions: shell companies registered in Estonia but effectively controlled from Russia order dual-use goods from Western manufacturers and route them through third countries.
One-third of goods declared as transit through Russia do not reach their stated final destination. KAPO has raised the issue with EU institutions, calling for a general ban on such transit and coordination of national sanctions between Finland, the Baltic states, and Poland.
An additional risk highlighted is demobilized Russian combatants. Among nearly 200,000 convicts sent to the front from Russian prisons, a significant portion has experience of war crimes, holds anti-Western ideological views, and forms a natural recruitment base for both intelligence services and criminal networks.
KAPO has begun systematically adding such individuals to the Schengen entry ban register and is calling on other EU countries to join the initiative.
