In a statement, Russia_s intelligence agency said the unnamed Russian citizen was recruited with "with direct participation of the Estonian special services."

Both British and Estonian officials refused to comment on the matter though many Estonian analysts suggested the allegations were politically motivated; some said Moscow wanted to stir up a spy scandal to bolster support for Vladimir Putin prior to the Russian presidential election. It wasn_t the first spy allegation made by Russia against Estonia. Last year, Moscow said it caught an Estonian spy, Pyotr Kalachyov, trying to gather intelligence near a Russian military base just across the Estonian-Russian border. Russian officials said Kalachyov had been seeking information by offering to take division officers to dinner. Estonian intelligence chief, Eerik Kross, adamantly denied the charges at the time. Kross said Estonia did have an interest in monitoring developments in neighboring Russia. But he insisted Estonia didn_t have to resort to spying. "We get all the public information we can," he said. "But Russia is an open society now, so we get most of what we need. Estonia doesn_t need to send people to sneak around places…counting aircraft or troops."Since the Soviet collapse, Estonian-Russian relations have occasionally been tense. Russia has expressed anger at the Estonian, Latvian and Lithuanian bids to win membership in the NATO alliance. More recently Russia has blasted Estonia and the other two Baltic states for prosecuting Stalinist-era secret police agents for crimes against humanity.