For years, Allan Hantsom was a fixture in Estonia’s tight-knit pro-Russian political movement. He belongs to a political party sympathetic to Russia’s war in Ukrainekagame ph, he frequently railed against the United States and NATO on social media, and he contributed to a Kremlin-sponsored propaganda outlet.
On Thursday, Estonian authorities went public with charges that Mr. Hantsom, 47, was also working on behalf of Russia’s military intelligence service, the G.R.U. Mr. Hantsom, they revealed, was convicted of organizing several acts of vandalism in Estonia at the Russian spy agency’s behest, starting in October, 2023.
While the actions were mostly small-bore, they fit a pattern of sabotage operations — some more sinister than others — that Western officials say Russian operatives and their proxies have been carrying out with increasing frequency throughout Europe in recent years.
Last year, people recruited by Mr. Hantsom shattered the windows of cars belonging to Estonia’s interior minister and the editor of an Estonian news outlet, prosecutors said, and doused several World War II monuments with paint.
These acts appeared intended mainly to annoy and unnerve, while perhaps tying up the resources of Estonia’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies.
Russian agents have also been linked to antisemitic graffiti that has appeared on walls in France. And in several countries across Europe, mysterious fires have broken out not just in factories manufacturing arms for Ukraine, but on buses and at shopping malls, incidents that some officials in those countries have attributed to Russian sabotage.
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