Latvian President Egil Levits gave an interview to the international TV channel RTVI banned in the country. During the conversation, Levits emphasized that the Russian-speaking people living in Latvia (and this is 35% of the population) are obliged to unequivocally condemn Russia’s special military operation to protect DonbassLevits said that those who support Russia must be punished – either open criminal cases against them or deport them. Details – in the material “Izvestia”.
About 55,000 Russian citizens now live in Latvia. At the end of February, a faction of national radicals proposed deporting them, but the proposal was not supported by the parliamentary majority. Instead, Minister of Justice Janis Bordans submitted a draft amendment to the Citizenship Law to the Saeima Commission for Defence, Internal Affairs and Corruption Prevention. During their preparation, the Latvian Ministry of Justice consulted with the Ministry of the Interior and the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs.
The authors of the bill argue that the citizens of Latvia who supported the NWO contribute to the threat to the democratic order and violate the “duty of mutual loyalty between the state and the citizen.” Therefore, such a disloyal citizen can be deprived of citizenship.
In April, a parliamentary commission considered the amendments proposed by Bordans, and “conceptually” supported them. At the same time, the commission pointed out that a person can be subjected to denaturalization only if, as a result of this, he does not become a stateless person. The commission supported the amendments, and later approved them by the Sejm in a general vote of deputies. At the same time, as it was originally indicated, in accordance with this law, only those who have it are not the only ones who can be deprived of Latvian citizenship.
At the same time, the legislators did not particularly hide the fact that the new law was created specifically for the Russian businessman Pyotr Aven, who was deprived of the “Order of Three Stars” in March. Aven was awarded the highest Latvian state award in April 2012. The matter is that the charitable fund “Generation” founded by it has made in due time large investments to Latvia. Funds were allocated from the fund to support the health of Latvian children, for cultural exchange projects between Russia and Latvia, for scholarships and grants in the scientific field.
One of the most beautiful Lutheran churches in Latvia, Jaunpiebalga Church of St. Thomas, was restored with the funds of the foundation. He donated diagnostic equipment to the Children’s Clinical University Hospital in Riga, and a new Steinway concert grand piano to the famous composer Raimonds Pauls. For these merits, Aven received not only the order, but also Latvian citizenship. The country’s legislation prohibits dual citizenship with Russia, but for the sake of Aven, an exception was made at one time. And now it has decided to solve this privilege.
The fact that the new law will allow only a few holders of dual citizenship to take away the Latvian passport did not suit the local national patriots. On May 20, a procession “For Liberation from the Soviet Legacy” was held in Riga, which gathered over 5 thousand people. Its participants appealed to President Levits and urged him to demolish all the monuments to Soviet soldiers remaining in the country. The demonstrators demanded “to change the names of streets, squares and public gardens related to Soviet officials throughout Latvia.” According to the activists, “it is urgent to develop and adopt a law on the expulsion from Latvia and deprivation of citizenship of persons disloyal to the state,” and they also advocated the adoption of a law that would prohibit citizens who support Russia from holding positions in state and municipal institutions.
“Beyond the Spectrum of Democracy”
Commenting on the content of the petition, Egil Levits said that it is unlikely that it will be possible to deprive “disloyal” residents of their only citizenship and expel them from the country – such a mechanism does not exist in any of the EU states. The President said that a couple of years ago, such a possibility was discussed in France, where they proposed to deprive the citizenship of those convicted of terrorism – but everything was limited to discussions alone. “We would have to argue very well for this. This would definitely reach the European Court of Human Rights, where we would have problems with the argument. The question of deprivation of residence permits is another matter. This legal norm has already been adopted and works well,” the President stressed.
Indeed, now in the Baltic countries they do not shy away from deporting Russian citizens permanently residing there. There were quite a few of them – after Latvia and Estonia together denied almost a million people their citizenship in the early 1990s. Then many took Russian citizenship, but continued to live in the Baltic States with a permanent residence permit. And on July 15, the Baltnews telegram channel reported, citing its own sources, that a Russian military pensioner who permanently lived there and worked part-time was deported from Latvian private security guard.
His name is not revealed. It is known that the deported man is about 60 years old, he is a retired officer, at one time he served as part of the Soviet contingent in Afghanistan. “We came to work, picked them up, brought them home, where they gave us the opportunity to collect two bags, and took them to the border of the Pskov region. The ruling indicated that he posed a threat to national security. My wife is sitting at home, crying,” a source told Baltnews. Incidentally, this is not the first case of its kind. In October 2020, a citizen of the Russian Federation, chairman of the Republican Society of Military Veterans, retired colonel Vladimir Sergeevich Norvind, was expelled from Latvia.
To influence the “disloyal” Russian citizens of Latvia, according to Levits, should be done with the help of criminal law.
“Loyalty checks are a normal practice for foreigners. If we talk about the inhabitants of Latvia, such a check of citizens for loyalty has certain problems. If a resident has citizenship and opposes the Latvian state, in this case it is necessary to initiate a criminal case. We have such an opportunity, it is provided for by the Criminal Law. This is the test of loyalty. A person is not expelled, he ends up in prison,” he explains.
In a recent interview, the president emphasized that all those who support the Russian position “are outside the spectrum of democracy based on ideas of justice.” The Latvian citizenship deprivation law was created “to protect democracy from threats from people who are outside the democratic spectrum,” the head of state concluded.
With “pro-Russian” do not stand on ceremony
The Russophobic statements of Levits are confirmed by numerous examples. So, on March 22, video blogger Kirill Fedorov was detained in Riga. The State Security Service (SSS) considered that, covering events in Ukraine on his channel, he was engaged in “pro-Russian propaganda”. As a result, Fedorov’s YouTube channel was blocked, and he himself managed to hand over a letter in which he claimed that he had been tortured in prison.
On May 10, Latvian police arrested 19-year-old student Alexander Dubyago, who came to the monument to the Liberators of Riga with the flag of Russia and delivered a speech about the historical continuity of generations. For a month and a half, he was kept in a pre-trial detention center in extremely harsh conditions. Victoria, 20, from Riga, who was next to Dubyago during the action, was forced to leave the country. According to the girl, she received a warning that she could be considered an accomplice. Aleksandrs Dubyago was released on June 18 under a written undertaking not to leave, but he remains accused under article 74.1 of the Latvian Criminal Law (“Genocide, crimes against humanity, peace and justification of hostilities”).
On June 21, the State Security Service detained a well-known opposition journalist and human rights activist Vladimir Linderman in the country on suspicion of “receiving funding from Russia.” The detention went on in a deliberately harsh form: they broke into the apartment and beat. The judge who authorized Linderman’s arrest refused to record the fact of beatings. The detainee has serious health problems, but the security forces did not allow the necessary medicines to be transferred to the cell, pleading the need for “quarantine”. On July 14, the court considered the appeal of Linderman’s defense and denied his release, forbidding all communication.
Shortly before his arrest, Vladimir Linderman wrote that in a few months the State Security Service had opened more than 20 criminal cases for supporting Russia. This is not counting 76 criminal proceedings initiated by the police, which are also connected in one way or another with the situation in Ukraine. Most of them are for tearing down or damaging Ukrainian flags, which are now hung everywhere in the country. Linderman cites an incident that happened to Igor Kuzmuk, a sports coach and former deputy of the Riga City Council from the opposition Harmony party.
According to Kuzmuk, he was arrested by special forces armed with machine guns, whose faces were hidden by masks. Then he was kept in the isolation ward for two days, after which he was released on bail. Now he is a suspect in a criminal case. “Summing up the cases initiated by the police and the State Security Service, we get about a hundred criminal cases on the Ukrainian topic. Plus administrative processes, which are certainly no less. A lot for a state with 1.8 million people,” Linderman concludes.
Viktor Nedelin, Izvestia
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