A video has surfaced on the internet in which an employee of the Russian consulate in Liepāja threatens protesters against Russia's invasion of Ukraine in exactly the same words as Putin threatened Ukraine in his February 21 speech.
Andrejs Piontkovskis ir Hadsona institūta zinātniskais līdzstrādnieks, kurš dzīvo Vašingtonā. Viņš ir viens no nopietnākajiem un šobrīd pasaulē populārākajiem putinologiem, kura ekspertīzes ne vienmēr ir patīkamas, toties precīzas. Pašreizējo Krievijas attīstības trajektoriju Putina vadībā viņš prognozēja jau sen.
Earlier this week, a number of highly influential world politicians arrived in Riga. On Monday, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid, on Tuesday Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg. They all met with the highest Latvian officials. What message did Levits, Kariņš, Rinkēvičs give them, and what message did they give us?
Andrei Piontkovsky is a visiting fellow at the Hudson Institute, living in Washington DC. He is one of the world's biggest and best-known putinologists, whose analyses are not always pleasant, but they are accurate. He predicted the current trajectory of Russia under Putin a long time ago.
How much of the blame do the Russian nation (in Russia) and people of Russian nationality (elsewhere in the world, including Latvia) bear for what is happening in Ukraine? While this question may seem secondary, since the most important thing now is to prevent a world war, it is crucial to answer it in order not to take the wrong steps based on misinformation.
Although the world's news agencies and broadcasting giants such as the BBC and CNN report on the war in Ukraine 24 hours a day without interruption, there is a key element in these reports that is one of the causes of the outbreak of this war.
The severe sanctions that Ukraine has been waiting for eight years, that the West has been talking about for eight years, but until now never got beyond talking about, have finally been implemented.
On Sunday afternoon, the Kremlin's fully controlled news agency RIA Novosti published a video report in which Putin instructs his "consiglieri" Shoygu and Gerasimov to prepare strategic deterrent weapons (nuclear weapons) on special combat alert. In other words, he was making a veiled threat to the whole world. This is basically an implicit admission that the Ukrainian campaign has failed. If not militarily, then certainly politically.
On the evening of the first day of the war, the "most severe" sanctions, which had already been mentioned and, one presumes, prepared in advance, were announced. Just how severe these sanctions were was shown the next morning, Friday, on the Moscow Stock Exchange, where trading resumed with a 22% rise in the indices.
The efforts to legally legitimize the Russian occupied territories in Eastern Ukraine by recognizing the statehood of the self-proclaimed Donbas "republics" have certain implications, which Russian President Vladimir Putin outlined in his address to the nation on Monday evening.
The most important question in the world right now is one: will a large-scale war in Europe (Russia's invasion of Ukraine) be avoided? This question leads to the next: will a global catastrophe be avoided? That is, a world war between the USA (NATO) and Russia?
On Thursday, the Saeima did not elect former President of the Constitutional Court Sanita Osipova as a Senator of the Supreme Court. This vote was predictable, as Osipova in her previous position mixed law with politics and ideology quite freely, thus paving the way for a political vote in the Saeima.
It is starting to seem that the coming Russia-Ukraine war will be the first in recent history to be announced in advance. Already a week ago, senior US officials, including US President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken, announced that the war will start on February 16. For his part, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky has declared this date a day of national unity.
The reality of modern life is increasingly forcing us to answer the question: what to do the person you are talking with is blatantly rude and crude, and does so with a sense of self-imposed moral superiority?
The Minister of the Economy, Jānis Vitenbergs, admitted on TV24's "Dienas personība" program that "Latvia has been in a state of emergency for more than 12 months over the last two years, during which it has lost its position in the Baltic region".
Lieske de Krijger, Deputy Head of Mission of the Dutch Embassy, very tactfully tweets about Riga's problems with snow and ice clearing. You can't go out on the street without "high heels"/snow spikes attached to your shoes.
Thanks to decisive action by several Nordic countries and, above all, our immediate neighbors, some people in our stubborn Kariņš/Pavļuts government have begun to show signs of sanity. Even the Prime Minister, Krišjānis Kariņš, has been forced to admit that the coalition is planning to introduce some relaxation of the Covid-19 restrictions from March 1. The exact details will be decided at a government meeting on February 15.
Recently, on social networks, every educated person could enjoy his intellectual superiority over a halfwitted faith-healer (at the same time a certified and still practicing doctor with 32 years of experience in the USA) Gunta Vīlere, who in a Youtube interview with Līga Krapāne pointed out, among other things, that various probiotics, including tea fungus kombucha, help against Covid.