| Welcome to the weekend issue of Brussels Edition, Bloomberg’s daily briefing on what matters most in the heart of the European Union. Join us on Saturdays for deeper dives from our bureaus across Europe. As Russia’s war in Ukraine continues just east of NATO’s border, tensions in the Baltic countries remain high. This week a man was sentenced to more than six years in prison for spying for Russia. Pavel Kapustin, a Russian citizen living in Estonia, was found guilty of providing intelligence to Moscow’s FSB security agency between 2022 and 2024. He’s not the first to be apprehended — Estonia holds the notable record of convicting more Russian spies than any other NATO or EU country. The most high profile cases involved a mole in Estonia’s own intelligence agency; another case involved an official with access to NATO secrets. The continuing drip of convictions and deportations captures the apprehensive mood in the frontline country where tensions with neighboring Russia have increased following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022. Estonia is one of the staunchest supporters of Kyiv and is rearming rapidly to deter future aggression from Moscow. Estonia, which broke away from the Soviet Union in 1991, has a complex history with its eastern neighbor.  The Old Town of Tallinn, Estonia. Photographer: Peter Kollanyi/Bloomberg While many of Estonia’s Russian-speaking residents have friends and family in Russia, the authorities in Tallinn discourage travel across the eastern border, citing a risk of recruitment by the Kremlin’s intelligence agencies. That risk was reinforced this week when Estonia’s national security agency said it had learned of recent attempts by Moscow to recruit locals. Among the charges leveled at Kapustin was that he had ferried information about the political views of Estonia’s substantial Russian-speaking community back to Russia. Estonian authorities say Moscow has sought to manipulate that community over the years. In a similar vein, fellow Baltic nation Lithuania this week said its large Belarusian community is being targeted by Alexander Lukashenko’s intelligence services through a combination of intimidation and the offer of rewards. Lithuania is particularly on edge ahead of a major military exercise scheduled in neighboring Belarus this September which will see thousands of Belarusian and Russian troops amass near the border. As the summer season settles in, those living on the EU’s eastern flank find that the war just beyond their border is hard to escape. — Ott Tammik | 
