Tag: riga

Staunton, May 21 — Vaira Vike-Freiberga, the former president of Latvia, points to an inconvenient truth that few want to recognize: no frozen conflicts in the former Soviet space will be resolved as long as Russia retains its veto in the UN Security Council and thus is in a position to block moves toward a […]

Latvia has spotted Russian warships and a submarine off its coast. Welcome to our column, Russia Update, where we will be closely following day-to-day developments in Russia, including the Russian government’s foreign and domestic policies. The previous issue is here. UPDATES BELOW Russia This Week: – What Happened to the Slow-Moving Coup? – Can We […]

Staunton, February 23 – After the events in the Donbass, not all that many Russians or Russian speakers in Latgale would welcome any intervention by Moscow, Aleks Grigoryevs says, but a small fraction of 10 to 20 percent might be prepared to and, “if they were armed,” could create major problems for Latvia because the […]

Staunton, January 22 — “Post-Soviet Russian nationalism has been fatally flawed from the outset because it arose not from the word ‘nation’ but from the word ‘nationality,’” a reflection of the fact that a Russian “nation” in the normal of sense that term does not yet exist in Russia, according to Vadim Shtepa. In a […]

Staunton, January 5 – Riga faces a dramatically expanded Russian media campaign to discredit it in the eyes of Latvians and the West and an increase in the activity of Russian special services against it, according to Maris Cepuritis, a researcher at the Riga Center for Research on the Politics of Eastern Europe. The analyst […]

Staunton, December 29 – Latvian Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics says that Riga is seeking EU funding in order to launch a Russian-language television network for Russian speakers in his country and the region so that they will not turn to Moscow channels that are full of misinformation and anti-Western propaganda. The new channel, he says, […]

Staunton, November 12 – Vladimir Putin is organizing a “separatist international” against European countries, thus combining two of his more widely recognized policies: promoting separatism in the former Soviet republics around Russia’s periphery and reaching out to nationalist extremists in Europe. According to the Severodonetsk portal, Russia is now attacking Europe using the old principle […]

Staunton, October 5 – Despite upbeat comments by a number of Russian media outlets yesterday and today that “ours” (having in mind Soglasiye), won the [Latvian parliamentary] elections,” Igor Pavlovsky says, “the facts are that [the members of that party] are not ‘ours’ and they did not win.” According to the Regnum news agency commentator, […]

Staunton, June 5 – Russia is redirecting its trade flows away from Lithuania in order to punish Vilnius for its outspoken support of Ukraine and opposition to Russian aggression there, a shift that has cut the flow of oil through the Butinge terminal by more than a third from a year ago and is costing […]