Today, the Lithuanian court convicted two citizens of that country for spying for Russia and sentenced them to prison terms of four and a half years.
The Regional Court in Klaipėda announced that the convicted Mindaugas Tunikaitis and Alexejus Gratius did not know each other, but that they were in contact with the same agent of the Russian FSB intelligence service from the Kaliningrad region, an exclave of Russia between Poland, Lithuania and the Baltic Sea.
Tunikaitis, who did not deny the charges, told the court that he regularly visited Kaliningrad and was recruited there by an agent of the FSB, the successor to the Soviet KGB secret police.
He stated that he had been observing, photographing and recording objects for almost six years, gathering information online or from other people and passing it on to an FSB agent.
For nearly four years, Gretius organized events that were partially financed by an unnamed Russian intelligence agent and photographed or filmed the events and the people who attended them, the court said.
Although Gratius denied the charges, the court concluded that there was sufficient evidence of his guilt.
Lithuania was part of the Soviet Union for five decades and declared independence on the eve of its collapse in 1991.
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