The Latvian National Council on electronic media previously opposed the use of Sputnik’s materials in state-financed news outlets, claiming that the “spending of Latvian taxpayers’ money to strengthen Sputnik and popularize its brand is not in the interests of Latvian society.”
According to Editor-In-Chief Valentins Rozencovs, he was detained on Wednesday in Riga and 12 hours later released by the police.
“Yesterday, at 22:40 [19:40 GMT] I was detained in Riga for a conversation, as they [the police] called it, upon my arrival from Moscow. They did not file any reports. The security police were interested in my work as senior editor of Sputnik Latvia and the work of the outlet itself in Latvia. I spent all night at the security police headquarters. I was released this morning, in less than 12 hours. This is not considered a formal detention in Latvia,” Rozencovs, who is a Latvian citizen, said.
Russian Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Maria Zakharova, when addressing the issue, stated it was a part of Latvian policies, aimed against Russian media in the country.
Earlier this year, Sputnik and other news outlets were forced to register as “foreign agents” under the US Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA). Before that, Google had decided to label news in its search results from RT and Sputnik as being government-funded in an attempt to address the so-called “Russian meddling” in the 2016 US presidential elections. Moscow has repeatedly denied these claims as baseless, stressing that no evidence has been provided to substantiate these claims.