Latvian EMP Tatjana Zdanoka Targeted by NATO Operation

Latvian authorities and the European Parliament have opened an investigation into Tatjana Zdanoka, a Latvian member of the European Parliament, accused of being a Russian agent. The investigation was prompted by an article published Jan. 29 on The Insider, an anti-Putin website connected to Bellingcat,  and has been characterized by Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as a “witch-hunt”, reminiscent of McCarthysm in the United States.

Ms. Zdanoka is co-chairman of the Latvian Russian Union, a political party that fights for the rights of the large Russian minority in Latvia, constituting 25% of the population. In recent times, she has exposed the increasing discrimination and repression of the Russian minority. In July 2023, she gave a presentation at the Strasbourg conference of the Schiller Institute showing how the government-lead russophobia goes so far as to target Russian classical authors, such as Alexander Pushkin. The discrimination against the Russian-speaking minority in Latvia is similar to that carried out by the Banderista regime in Kiev after the 2014 Maidan coup.

The allegation raised by The Insider is that Zdanoka has worked for the Russian security service FSB (former KGB), reporting to two case officers: Dmitry Gladey and Sergei Beltyukov. Asked by that website, she said she had only had working relationships as an MEP with Gladey, who was chairman of the International Institute for Monitoring the Development of Democracy, and knows no one named Beltyukov. Wittily, she added: “I can testify that the only people with whom I have sat at the same table, and with the certain knowledge that they are/were Russian FSB officers, are Vladimir Putin and Sergei Naryshkin.” (The latter is the current director of the FSB.)

Ms. Zdanoka posted on FB a statement entitled “You Will Not Be Able To Scare Me”, saying that The Insider’s rush to publish the attack on her can be explained by an event she was holding at the Parliament on Jan. 31, in commemoration of the victims of Holocaust and on the new danger of fascism in Europe. Her representative, Zhanna Karelina, told the Latvian news portal Delfi that the MEP was consulting lawyers over the possibility of suing the news outlets.