Russian intelligence agency says it's thwarted a Latvian and Lithuanian spy mission

The FSB, Russia's Federal Security Service (the successor to the KGB), says Latvian and Lithuanian intelligence services have attempted espionage in Russia.

The FSB says foreign intelligence officers tried to persuade two Kaliningrad-based ex-servicemen to reveal restricted information pertaining to the Baltic fleet.

Citizens of Latvia and Lithuania met the ex-servicemen by claiming a shared interest in First and Second World War history, saying they were looking for hidden caches left behind in Kaliningrad by the East Prussian population deported from the territory.

In their exchanges with the ex-servicemen, the intelligence agents allegedly tried to get information about Russia's Baltic fleet. The Latvian and Lithuanian nationals have since been denied entry to Russia. At the same time, the Russian former soldiers have been issued warning about the inadmissibility of such interactions. No legal proceedings have been brought against them for their exchanges with the foreigners.

The foreigners apparently asked the ex-servicemen to use their old connections in military structures to relay the location of military equipment (such as tanks and helicopters), weapons (artillery and machine guns of Russian and German origin), and infrastructure related to the Baltic fleet.

In 2015, several cases of treason relating to Russian ex-servicemen were made public.

In September 2015, a court sentenced former Central Intelligence Directorate (GRU) officer Gennadiy Kravtsov to 14 years in prison for disclosing classified information in a report he put together for a foreign company.