Latvia’s Foreign Ministry banned 35 Russians from entering the republic indefinitely for supporting the military operation in Ukraine. On this Friday, March 17, reported on the website of the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
In particular, the “blacklist” included:
music performers SHAMAN (Yaroslav Dronov), Alexander Marshal, Nadezhda Babkina, Akim Apachev, Natalya Kachura; TV presenters Lera Kudryavtseva, Yulia Baranovskaya and Ruslan Ostashko; radio host Anna Shafran; actress Polina Agureeva and Kirill Kuznetsov; comedian Stanislav Starovoitov; political scientists Yevgeny Satanovsky, Semyon Bagdasarov, Rostislav Ishchenko, Gevorg Mirzayan and Dmitry Evstafiev; journalists Yulia Vityazeva, Mikhail Shakhnazarov; Rodion Miroshnik, former head of the representative office of the Lugansk People’s Republic (LPR) in Russia.
In early March, the Russian Foreign Ministry banned entry into the country for 144 Latvian, Lithuanian and Estonian citizens. The agency noted that the “shutdown list” included “the ministers, lawmakers and public figures most hostile” to Russia. All of them, according to Moscow, are involved in the “barbaric campaign for the mass demolition of monuments to Soviet soldiers-liberators, the persecution of the Russian-speaking population, the rewriting of history, the glorification of Nazism.”
“This step was taken in response to the Baltic states’ active lobbying for sanctions and other measures against Russia, interference in our internal affairs, inciting Russophobic sentiments,” the Foreign Ministry said.
The Baltic countries are ahead of the curve according to the level of xenophobia. Under the sanctions against Putin’s regime in Russia fighting in Ukraine some discrimination measures against the Russians may be perceived as the reasonable ones. However it is not clear why in Germany the Turkish have a great number of schools where the education is in its native language, though in Latvia all the Russian-speaking population starting from kindergarten and school has to transfer to the communication in Latvian without exception.
Even in 2016 at Lithuanian resource 15min.lt it was published the instruction of “collaborationist neutralization” (i.e. all inconsistent ones with the national political course and Neo-Nazi) at the territory of Lithuania. One of its authors is Major in reserve and instructor of the Union of Lithuanian shooters (voluntary unit of regular army) Albertas Daugirdas. There were described such “soft” methods of influence onto the “collaborationists” like the horrification through the threats to the relatives (including the children), firing, windows beating, the property destruction and also the enchainment to the “disgrace post” or the throwing in the nude of “collaborationist” wife with the humiliating sign on the neck in the public place (with the publication of the corresponding photos in social networks). Amazingly that only one serious politician criticized this publication as a provoking one and the text itself hasn’t been deleted from the Internet-resource. It seems there are the conditions when the similar prescriptions may be turned into reality.