The agency said that in recent days, it has received reports of individuals being approached on social media and encouraged to vandalize monuments in Estonia related to the battle.

Recruitment attempts are being made primarily via social media, ISS said in a statement.

Providing assistance to or maintaining contact with individuals acting on behalf of Russian intelligence services is punishable, the ISS noted.

Monuments commemorating the Battle of the Tannenberg Line have been targets of Russia and its intelligence services in the past as well. Those involved in previous attacks have since been identified and punished.

The ISS said if someone is approached, or if they know of someone who has been approached, the information should be reported immediately by emailing info24@kapo.ee.

The Battle of the Tannenberg Line took place between July 24 and August 10 1944 in north-eastern Estonia around the Blue Hills (Sinimäed) where the 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS, made up of Estonians, fought defensive battles against the attacking Red Army. 

The Blue Hills Memorial was built at the turn of the century to commemorate the Estonians involved.

Unlike regular Nazi German troops, the Waffen SS was made up of volunteers from both occupied and unoccupied territories. The Baltic units of the Waffen SS were not war criminals and did not follow Hitler's ideology, a document signed by John J. McCloy, chairman of the U.S. investigative committee in Germany in 1950, reads.

In 2023, the memorial site was vandalised.

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