The Office of the Prosecutor General of Estonia has charged Svetlana Burceva, a naturalized citizen of Estonia, with violating international sanctions and treason.
According to the charges, the journalist living in Estonia primarily advanced the interests of the Russian propaganda machine, Postimees reported.
State Prosecutor Eneli Laurits told Postimees that the Office of the Prosecutor General has brought charges against Burceva in the Harju County Court pursuant to general procedure. Burceva is accused of violating international sanctions and committing treason.
Burceva, who acquired Estonian citizenship through naturalization in 1994, worked since 2017 for the Russian media conglomerate Rossiya Segodnya (Russia Today, or RT) for various Estonian online publications, covering public events in Estonia. Her work was published as online news and other media texts serving the interests of Russian propaganda.
After the EU had imposed sanctions on Russia, Burceva continued to work in the interests of Dmitry Kiselyov, the owner and real beneficiary of Rossiya Segodnya.
According to the indictment, Burceva was aware of the unlawfulness of her activities and continued her activities in violation of the sanctions also after the suspension of the activities of the news portal Sputnik in Estonia for the violation of sanctions in 2019. Between 2020 and 2023, Burceva continued to produce media content for the portal Baltnews.ee, also using the pseudonym Alan Torm.
“As a result of the pre-trial investigation, the Internal Security Service has concluded that Burceva can in no way be considered an independent, objective and neutral journalist. In the opinion of the ISS, the evidence suggests that Burceva is a propagandist who worked for the benefit of media portals serving the Kremlin’s aggressive aims, in whose activities, in addition to a violation of international sanctions, the investigation also identified a crime against the state,” Laurits added.
From 2019 to 2021, Burceva attended master’s studies at the Sevastopol State University, where she completed the information and hybrid conflict curriculum curated and led by a former FSB counterintelligence officer and the head of a private intelligence company registered in Russia.
“The aim of the two-year master’s program is to train international media staff and analysts who would be at the forefront of the fight against hybrid threats to Russia,” the state prosecutor said.
After completing her studies, Burceva, in collaboration with the head of the study program, published a book titled “Hybrid War for the World,” which describes a global hybrid war that must be won by Russia. The book was advertised as written in Estonia, as it was published under the name of L. B. Svet, a political scientist allegedly living in Estonia, which is actually a pseudonym of Burceva.
The content of the book is disparaging of the Republic of Estonia and is intended to cause division in Estonian society and discredit the Republic of Estonia and its institutions.
According to the Office of the Prosecutor General of Estonia, the evidence presented in the indictment suggests that Burceva, as a citizen of Estonia, committed treason through the conduct of non-violent activities directed against the independence and sovereignty of the Republic of Estonia.
Source: BNS
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