Russia accuses Estonian former soldier of planning to fight in Ukraine

Former Estonian soldier Artur Kirmjõe is in prison in Russia, accused of planning to join Ukraine’s forces as a mercenary. His family says he travelled to Russia to be with his wife after she was denied international protection in Estonia, ERR reported.

Russia’s Federal Security Service published a video in June in which a masked man identified as Kirmjõe appears to say he contacted Ukrainian representatives to ask for help joining their armed forces. His relatives confirm he is the person in the video but say he was forced to read a false confession.

“He said what he was forced to say, but it is all false,” his younger brother, Jüri Kirmjõe, told ERR. His mother, Inga Allikas, said someone intending to fight for Ukraine would not travel to Russia with large suitcases and a cat to visit his wife.

The 30-year-old Estonian citizen faces a possible prison sentence of seven to 12 years in Russia. His family says they had previously kept quiet, hoping the case was a misunderstanding, but now want to draw international attention to it.

Kirmjõe was born in Tallinn and grew up in Maardu in a large bilingual family. He studied first in Russian and then in Estonian, attended the Estonian Maritime Academy and served as a paramedic in the Scout Battalion, a military unit, from autumn 2018 until the end of 2020.

The events began shortly after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine. In late March 2022, a Russian couple known to Kirmjõe came to Estonia. The following month, they applied for international protection, saying their opposition to the Russian government put them at risk. Their lawyer, Merili Laansoo, said they cited persecution over their political views. An official told ERR that the information presented during the process had been checked, but did not provide sufficient grounds to grant them protection.