Latvian member of the European Parliament Tatjana Ždanoka has been accused of working with Russian intelligence services since 2004 in a joint investigation by Russian, Latvian, Estonian and Swedish media outlets.
Ireland’s Left independent MEPs Clare Daly and Mick Wallace have taken part in several events with Ms Ždanoka*, including in Lithuania in 2021 and 2022 to demonstrate in support of Algirdas Paleckis, a former politician and diplomat who was convicted of spying for Russia.
Ms Ždanoka, who represents a hardline electorate within Latvia’s Russian ethnic minority and has long advocated in the European Parliament on issues that chime with Russian foreign policy priorities, did not respond to a request for comment.
In a statement on her Facebook page on Monday, she declared, “I will not be intimidated by false accusations.” She denied collaborating with intelligence services, and vowed that “I and like-minded people continue and will continue to use the platform of the European Parliament to fight neo-fascism.”
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The investigation by Russian independent news organisation The Insider, Estonian media outlet Delfi, Latvian investigative journalism centre Re:Baltica, and Swedish newspaper Expressen published emails between Ms Ždanoka and two people identified as intelligence agents in Russian security service, the FSB.
The emails dating from 2004 to 2017 show correspondence between Ms Ždanoka and two men that the reports describe as her “handlers” in the Russian intelligence services. The emails organise physical meetings in Moscow and Brussels, discuss her various activities in the parliament, and in one she requests funding for an event she organised.
She told The Insider that she did not recall knowing anyone with the name of one of the alleged Russian intelligence agents, and that the other was an acquaintance she knew socially.
Mr Wallace and Ms Daly have taken part in several events with Ms Ždanoka related to Russian issues.
Mr Wallace did not respond to a request for comment. In an email, Ms Daly said: “Would you ever cover the work that we actually do instead of occupying your time with these constant attempts to construct elaborate guilt-by-association conspiracy theories?”
Eight days before Russia invaded Ukraine, Ms Daly and Mr Wallace joined Ms Ždanoka for a protest in the European Parliament in which the three donned T-shirts bearing the slogan “stop killing Donbas children”. The slogan reflects the accusation that Ukrainian forces were killing children in the east of the country, part of Russia’s justification for its invasion, and the protest was widely covered in pro-Kremlin Russian media.
Ms Daly and Mr Wallace also took part in an online seminar about “politically motivated persecution in the Baltic States” with Ms Ždanoka in November 2021, according to a statement issued at the time by Ms Ždanoka’s Latvian Russian Union party.
As previously reported by The Irish Times, in November 2021 and March 2022 Ms Daly and Mr Wallace travelled to Lithuania to attend a court hearing and a demonstration with Ms Ždanoka in support of Paleckis, who was convicted of collecting information for Russian intelligence services in return for money and other benefits.
At the time, Ms Daly’s website described the trial as an example of “how espionage law is being misused in Europe and further abroad to stifle dissent”.
*This article was amended after Clare Daly’s office contacted The Irish Times following publication to say that while Ms Daly and Mr Wallace had observed the court case involving Mr Paleckis in 2021 and 2022, they had not travelled with Ms Ždanoka. Ms Daly’s office also pointed out that while Ms Daly and Mr Wallace have appeared at events with Ms Ždanoka, they did not organise those events with her as was incorrectly stated in an earlier version of this article.
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