An ethnic Russian influencer in Estonia was arrested after he spread Moscow’s narratives for years. Oleg Besedin had financial connection both with Russia and with Estonian political parties supported by the country’s Russian community.
A Russian fifth column operating in Estonia
In early November, the Estonian Internal Security Service detained Oleg Besedin, a cameraman and head of the local TV channel TVN, on suspicion of non-violent activities against Estonia and of violating international sanctions.
This caused a small stir in the local Russian-speaking community: Besedin was well known, including as the administrator of the large Facebook group “Tallinners,” and as a cameraman he worked on assignments for many Russian-speaking politicians.
At the same time, his arrest did not come as a surprise to many: the content he produced was widely seen as evidence of a pro-Russian fifth column operating in Estonia.
One of his Facebook posts was quite telling in this regard: “Military equipment is passing through Estonia to Ukraine — a trainload of American Abrams. Later, when Estonia starts getting bombed, don’t complain.”
This is far from the only example of Besedin spreading so called Kremlin narratives.
His YouTube channel has more than 200,000 subscribers, and its content has far more in common with Russian television than with Estonia’s information landscape. For example, in September he published an interview with Russian propagandist Igor Korotchenko titled “NATO will not save the Baltics from a Russian strike.”
Among other things, Besedin was a close friend of the controversial Estonian crypto-entrepreneur and politician Oleg Ivanov, who fled Estonia shortly after founding the pro-Russian party Koos (Together). Both are children of prominent figures in the local Russian-speaking community: Besedin’s father, Alexander, is a former director of the Russian Cultural Center and former member of the Tallinn City Council, while Ivanov’s father, Vladimir, once headed the city districts of Mustamäe and Lasnamäe.
Besedin created video content for Ivanov’s party Koos and likely had a role in the idea of a joint prayer service by Metropolitan Yevgeny of the Moscow Patriarchate and Koos under the slogan “Together for Peace.” It should be noted that “peace,” according to the party’s program, implies friendly relations with Putin’s Russia.
The prayer service was supposed to take place on the eve of the first anniversary of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, on Toompea, where Estonia’s largest Orthodox cathedral and the parliament building are located. Estonia’s Ministry of the Interior viewed this as interference by the Orthodox Church in secular politics.
The prayer service ultimately did not take place, and Metropolitan Yevgeny was soon stripped of his residence permit and forced to relocate to Russia. Because Estonian authorities consider the activities of the Moscow Patriarchate to be a form of Kremlin soft power, they tried to ban it. However, the law passed by parliament was not approved by the president, who deemed it unconstitutional.
Besedin’s activity did not go unnoticed: Propastop, a Kaitseliit website dedicated to combating propaganda, wrote about him regularly, pointing to the spread of pro-Russian narratives and calling for his social media groups to be shut down. Besedin sued the site and the news outlet Delfi, seeking a retraction, but lost. He could also be seen, for instance, at conferences or photographing guests at the entrance to a reception at the British Embassy, where he was unlikely to have been invited. He repeatedly appeared in the annual review of the Internal Security Service. At the same time, until now his activities had not crossed the boundaries of law.
On Moscow’s payroll
In May of this year, the weekly Eesti Ekspress published an investigation showing that even during the full-scale war in Ukraine, Besedin’s family was carrying out a project in Estonia funded by the Russian Foundation for Support and Protection of the Rights of Compatriots, which is linked to Russian intelligence services. The goal of the project was to create a database of monuments and burial sites of Soviet soldiers in Estonia on the website pomni.ee.
Soviet monuments are a sensitive topic for Estonia. From the relocation of the Bronze Soldier in 2007, which triggered mass riots and caused one death, to the removal of the Soviet tank in Narva in 2022, which stirred strong emotions among the local Russian-speaking population — this issue is a point of division in Estonian society, something Russia skillfully exploits and Estonian authorities do not always handle well. Besedin was not afraid to take on such topics.
During his more than ten years of cooperation with the Russian foundation, he repeatedly undertook work that went against the Estonian mainstream. Eesti Ekspress wrote, among other things, about the film “We Have the Right”, which described the activities of Russian compatriots in Estonia and criticized the education reform and the transition of Russian schools to Estonian-language instruction.
Criticism of the reform itself, like any criticism of the Estonian authorities, is not unusual; it is a fairly common viewpoint in the local Russian-speaking community. However, according to the Estonian Prosecutor’s Office, Besedin received money from Russia for this work. “In the allegations presented, we indicated that Oleg Besedin’s activities on his YouTube channel were often coordinated with various individuals located in the Russian Federation, including those specializing in Russian influence operations. In our assessment, this cooperation was not accidental,” chief state prosecutor Taavi Pern said in an interview with national television.
During the search, hundreds of thousands of rubles were found in Besedin’s possession. He is also accused of providing content to Russian media outlets that are under EU sanctions. Now, on just one of the charges alone, he faces between 2 and 15 years in prison.
Russia’s predictable reaction: accusations of Rusophobia
Russia reacted predictably to Besedin’s arrest, calling it a Tallinn witch hunt, persecution of dissenters, and an expression of Russophobia in the Baltic country. “Once again, we note that Estonia has created a rigid system of mechanisms for suppressing fundamental human rights. There is a clear desire by Tallinn to curry favor with its neoliberal puppet masters by totally eliminating any dissent and fueling Russophobic sentiment. There is no doubt that media pluralism and the legal rights of journalists worry Estonia’s political elite least of all,” said Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova.
Besedin’s arrest caused problems not only for his family but also for Tallinn’s Russian-speaking politicians who had hired him as a videographer for years. One of Besedin’s regular clients was the Tallinn city government, which had long been run by members of the Centre Party. After the municipal elections in October, the Centre Party, which received the most votes, has been trying to form a governing coalition with the party “Fatherland.” The Social Democrats, who finished second and had governed Tallinn for the past year and a half, accused the Centre Party of cooperating with a videographer who was knowingly disloyal to the Estonian state.
“The sums are enormous,” Tallinn Mayor Evgeny Osinovski told ERR. “Over 15 years they exceeded 800,000 euros. What did Besedin do for this money? Mostly simple party propaganda in favor of the Centre Party, as well as spreading Russian narratives beneficial to the centrists.” City officials have begun reviewing the contracts concluded with Besedin and the payments made, noting that the detainee’s father, Alexander Besedin, who once headed the Russian Cultural Center and lost his position after a reorganization, has been rehired into a municipal institution.
The centrists responded by saying that many Social Democratic politicians had also been happy to work with Besedin before he was taken into custody. A series of photos was posted on Facebook showing the ubiquitous Oleg Besedin posing with well-known Estonian politicians, including the president. The payments to Besedin were examined by the parliamentary anti-corruption committee chaired by a centrist, which found that Besedin personally received 275,000 euros from the city. No decisions followed.
Given that the second potential coalition partner, “Fatherland,” also became the subject of a prosecutor’s investigation in November for possible illegal financing, it is not surprising that the identity of Tallinn’s future mayor remains unknown. Oleg Besedin is currently being held in custody for two months.
