Kaliningrad & the Baltics.

[TsarSamuil]

Baltic Blacklist: Professor sacked for speaking to RT.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gcs3FZICB4

Jun 3, 2012 by RussiaToday

Media coverage of discrimination against ethnic Russians in the Baltic Republics is fuelling a fresh row. Latvian authorities have sacked a professor, after he voiced his grievances on RT.

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Vid,
www.rt.com/news/latvia-professor-estonia-report-840/

Baltic blacklist: Professor sacked for speaking to RT.

RT.com
2 June, 2012, 16:09

Media coverage of discrimination against ethnic Russians in the Baltic Republics is fuelling a fresh row. Latvian authorities have sacked a professor, after he voiced his grievances on RT.

In February, a teacher at Riga’s naval academy, Georgs Kuklis-Rosmanis, spoke to RT, rising in defense of his friends from the Russian minority in Latvia.

“I cannot accept the policy of treachery to my friends – those who also voted for Latvia’s independence in 1991,” he told RT at the time.

“We were shoulder-to-shoulder back then, but now they are being treated like garbage – no citizenship for them and no jobs here. That’s why I signed for the referendum,” Kuklis-Rosmanis said, explaining to RT why he put his signature under the proposal to hold a referendum on making Russian Latvia’s second official language.

The poll was held in February, but the option was rejected.

And four months on, Georgs is looking for a new job. It was made clear to him by the academy’s management that his appearance on RT meant he had no future there.

“My boss called me and said this interview was harmful for our future students,” he now tells RT’s Aleksey Yaroshevsky. “He made it look as if I made an act of aggression against Latvia. I told them I only spoke my mind, which I have a constitutional right to do. Later, my colleagues told me the academy’s rector ordered the HR department to find a reason to sack me after the summer exams.”

Sadly enough, Georgs is not the only one to face repressions.

A top-level politician from another Baltic country – Estonia – also commented on one of RT’s stories on the country’s ban on Russian. And also found himself targeted by the authorities.

The deputy mayor of Tallinn, Mikhail Kylvart, was surprised to see himself on the 2011 annual report put together by Estonia’s security police (KAPO), outlining actual and potential threats to national security. He decided to take action.

“I was blacklisted because of my activities to protect and preserve Russian schools here,” he explained to RT. “The security police believe this could violate Estonia’s sovereignty. I have a different opinion and that’s why I filed a lawsuit against the organization. For me it’s not only about clearing my name, but to stop dangerous tendencies which undermine democracy in my country.”

That list also contained almost all Russian TV stations – including RT and its correspondent Aleksey Yaroshevsky. It also had Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov, an anti-fascist activist from Finland and a dozen NGOs.

Member of Estonia’s parliament Jana Tooma – also one of the names on the blacklist – wrote a letter to Estonia’s prime minister demanding answers. She believes such actions are illegal.

“We’re not at war with Russia or anyone else, that’s why we have no grounds to blacklist any organizations or channels,” she explained to RT. “The security police have been writing these reports for many years, but this time they have crossed a certain line. I read their rules and they say this organization is only responsible for gathering information and intel, not publishing it to influence the public opinion.”

In the two decades since independence, the Baltic States have been trying hard to bury their communist past. Ironically, putting people on blacklists was one of the methods used by the Soviet special services. So with more people being scrutinized for speaking their minds, the desire of the Baltic countries to follow a democratic path may be called into question.

Those who have found themselves under pressure from the authorities for speaking out to the media say they are especially surprised things like that happen in modern-day Europe. They say they never wanted to harm their homeland and want democracy to prevail after all.

[TsarSamuil]

Friends with Russia? You're on blacklist for Estonia! (investigative report)



Jun 9, 2012 by RussiaToday

After being branded a threat to national security' by Estonia, RT's Eastern European correspondent Alexey Yaroshevsky traveled to Tallinn to try and get an explanation. Along with a number of Russian and Estonian politicians, he was put on a blacklist by security police after a series of reports about some of the country's policies. Here's Alexey's investigation into the events.

[TsarSamuil]

Polish national hero’s tomb vandalised in Vilnius.

PAP/IAR
18.06.2012 14:50

The mausoleum of one of Poland’s greatest national heroes has been defaced in the Rasos cemetery in Vilnius, the capital of Lithuania.


Tomb in Vilnius: photo - wikicommons

The tomb containing the heart of Józef Piłsudski, who was born 1867 in Zalavas, then in Poland (Zulow), and his mother’s remains, had the Columns of Gediminas, the historical coat of arms of Lithuania, one of the oldest symbols of the country, scrawled on it Sunday.

Police have launched an investigation into the offence, carrying a sentence of up to two years in prison, says superintendent of Vilnius police, Antoni Mikulski.

In an official statement, Lithuanian prime minister Andrius Kubilius condemned the act of vandalism.

“We must put up resistance against hatred, regardless of who the perpetrator is,” he said.

According to Lithuanian foreign minister Emanueli Zingeris, the act of vandalism was meant to incite hatred between two EU member states.

The head of diplomacy stated that he, alongside other MPs, would personally pay a tribute to the memory of Józef Piłsudski – one of the founders of Polish independence following the end of the 1914 – 18 World War.

Marshal Józef Piłsudski, is remembered differently Lithuania, however, where is remembered for annexing the Vilnius region into Poland in the 1920s.

Relations between Poland and Lithuania have deteriorated in recent years amid disputes over the status of the Polish language in the Lithuanian education system, among other issues. (pg/aba)

[TsarSamuil]

Obama and Clinton to get ‘alien’ passports in Latvia.

RT.com
27 June, 2012, 21:13

Latvian human rights activists have issued “alien” passports for Barack and Michel Obama and Hillary Clinton to draw attention to the status of ethnic Russians in the country. Despite being born in Latvia, thousands have “non-citizen” passports.

Latvian activists have sent “passports of non-US citizens” to the American embassy in Riga, where Secretary of State Hillary Clinton is expected to arrive on Thursday.

Purple – as this color is widely recognized as a symbol of discrimination – passports for the US President, his wife and Hillary Clinton look exactly the same as those of Latvia’s non-citizens.

And this is not a joke as it may first seem.

Activists hope that with these passports of non-citizens of America, they might understand how aliens in Latvia feel, namely of being strangers in their own country.

Latvian human rights activists want the US to pay attention to the problem that more than 300,000 people face in Latvia. Despite the fact that many were born in the country, they are still considered “resident aliens."

This means they cannot vote, cannot work in many state-employed positions and often have trouble crossing borders. However, they still have to pay taxes.

"The US is the citadel of democracy in the modern world. And they cannot remain indifferent to human rights violations and harassment directed against minorities,” activists said in their statement, published by Latvian news outlet TVNET.

“When the Soviet Union denied Solzhenitsyn citizenship, the entire democratic world was outraged. When Latvia (as well as neighboring Estonia) denied citizenships for hundreds of thousands of people, the West, unfortunately, has remained silent,” the statement reads.

These passports should show the absurdity of the situation in Latvia.

Even though all these families moved to Latvia when the state was a part of the USSR, they are not automatically eligible for Latvian nationality.

Only those born after Latvian independence in 1991 automatically receive citizenship.

“The Latvian elite is doing this with impunity, using the fact that Europe and America have enough worries at home and in other regions,” the activists wrote.

They insist that Latvia cannot struggle for democracy when the rights of hundreds of thousands are being violated.

“It’s hard to believe that non-citizens are in this situation only because they or their relatives did not live in Latvia before 1940. Nonsense!” reads the statement.

[TsarSamuil]

Kaliningrad visa-free travel begins Friday.

theNews.pl
27.07.2012 15:37

Poles and Russians can move across the border with the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad, on Poland's north east border, as of Friday.

The visa-free travel is the result of a bilateral agreement on so-called “small cross border traffic” signed between Poland and Russia in December last year.

The drafting of the final document took four years of consultations and allows the reciprocal privilege for citizens residing no further than 50 kilometers from the border of doing away with troublesome visa applications and enjoying unlimited possibility of moving across the mutual stretch of the border.

Poland's foreign minister, Radoslaw Sikorski noted that the agreement has given some 3 million Poles and Russians the opportunity to travel without visas when visiting.

However, visa free travel does not envisage cancellation of border control between the Polish Pomorskie and Warminsko-Mazurskie provinces and the Russian Kaliningrad Region.

Those found in breach of the rules of the agreement may have their cross border travel permits revoked and receive a ban for applying for a Schengen visa. (ss)

[TsarSamuil]

Latvia Declares Russian Editors Personae Non-Gratae.

16:49 08/08/2012
MOSCOW, August 8 (RIA Novosti)

The Latvian Foreign Ministry has declared two high-ranking Russian journalists personae non-gratae in Latvia.

The Latvian authorities say Modest Kolerov, the former editor-in-chief of the Regnum news agency, and Igor Pavlovsky, the current deputy editor, have secretly undermined the territorial integrity and economic security of Latvia, according to a ministry press statement.

Kolerov, a former director of the Presidential Administration's Deparment for Interregional and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, is an active opponent of what he considers to be growing facism in the Baltic countries.

He is already on “black lists” in Georgia, Lithuania and Estonia, according to a Regnum report.

Russia and the Baltic states remain at a loggerheads over cultural and historical issues. The Russian authorities have repeatedly expressed dismay at what they say are neo-Nazi marches, which honor local veterans of World War II who fought for the Nazis, which are held in Lithuania's and Latvia's capital cities.

Regnum is a federal news agency that covers news in Russia and neighboring countries. The Estonian authorities accused the agency in 2005 of acting as a propaganda tool on the behalf of the Russian government.

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Moscow Blasts Riga’s Decision on Russian Journalists.

23:45 09/08/2012
MOSCOW, August 9 (RIA Novosti)

Latvia can expect an appropriate response from Moscow for its decision to declare two prominent Russian journalists personae non gratae, a Russian Foreign Ministry official said on Thursday.

The Latvian Foreign Ministry announced on Wednesday that Modest Kolerov, the former editor-in-chief of the Regnum news agency, and Igor Pavlovsky, the current deputy editor, secretly undermined the territorial integrity and economic security of Latvia and included them in the so-called blacklist.

“Obviously such actions contradict Riga’s official statements on the desire to develop pragmatic and mutually beneficial cooperation with our country… We reserve the right to respond appropriately,” said Maria Zakharova, a deputy head of the ministry’s information and press department.

She added that Latvia would bear the onus for any potential negative consequences of the decision.

Kolerov, a former director of the Presidential Administration's Deparment for Interregional and Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries, is an active opponent of what he considers to be growing facism in the Baltic countries.

He is already on “blacklists” in Georgia, Lithuania and Estonia, according to a Regnum report.

Russia and the Baltic states remain at loggerheads over cultural and historical issues. The Russian authorities have repeatedly expressed dismay at what they say are neo-Nazi marches held in Riga and the Lithuanian capital Vilnius that honor local veterans of World War II who fought for the Nazis.

Regnum is a federal news agency that covers news in Russia and neighboring countries. The Estonian authorities accused the agency in 2005 of acting as a propaganda tool on behalf of the Russian government.

[TsarSamuil]

Estonian gas co. advertises with Auschwitz gate.

RT.com
23 August, 2012, 20:32



An Estonian company has landed itself in a scandal after its website posted an image of the infamous “Arbeit macht frei” (work sets you free) gate to the Auschwitz concentration camp in an attempt to advertise the firm’s gas and heating services.

The image of the Auschwitz gate on Gasterm’s website was supplied with a signature that can be roughly translated as “Gas heating – flexible, convenient and effective.” The slogan, which looks regular for this section, sent an odd message when placed right under the notorious sign adorning the Auschwitz gate.

The advertisement was added to the website the previous week, according to the Estonian daily DzD.

By Thursday, the day on which Europe commemorates victims of Stalinism and Nazism, the image was replaced by one of a gas burner. The slogan was expanded to say: “If the image placed here earlier has caused any inconvenience, please accept our sincere apologies.”


Screen capture of Gasterm's website main page made on August 23, 2012 (Image from www.gasterm.ee/)

The Auschwitz image was personally created by Gasterm Executive Director Sven Linros, he told the Eesti Päevaleht newspaper. He wanted to show the historic place from a different perspective. Linros says that when touring the Auschwitz camp he was astonished to find out gas heating was also used there.

“This slight provocation was probably a bad idea,” Linros said in the wake of several angry emails, Delfi.ee portal quotes him.

Linros says he condemns the crimes against humanity committed in the concentration camp. But he also insists the Gasterm website is designed for gas heating experts, who did not seem to find the image at all controversial.

Linros went on to relate a joke about Hitler and his gas bill.

Over 1.3 million people died in the Nazi camp, situated in Poland, during World War II. Auschwitz is still remembered for its gas chambers used for mass executions.

[TsarSamuil]

Polish and Russian minorities to stand together in general election.

theNews.pl
23.08.2012 10:27

The Electoral Action of Poles (AWPL) in Lithuania will be contesting October's general election in the Baltic state on a joint-ticket with the Russian Alliance and Lithuanian People's Party.


AWPL's election web site

AWPL's only member of the European Parliament (MEP) Waldemar Tomaszewski has told the local Radio Znad Wilii that the two other parties, representing the Russian minority and rural voters, initiated the election bloc.

Under Lithuanian rules, individual parties must get five percent of the vote in general elections before they can take seats in parliament, while parties standing in ballots as a bloc must receive seven percent.

In the 2008 elections, the Polish minority party – which sits with right wing conservatives in the European Parliament, won three seats in the 141-seat lower house (Seimas).

MEP Tomaszewski said that the bloc "had already agreed to a list of 130 candidates" for the elections on 14 October and will be standing mainly on economic policy and not necessarily minority issues, such as the status of Polish language teaching in schools. (pg)

[TsarSamuil]

Estonian pissants!

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No trial as Estonian military accused of making Russian cadets dig own graves.

RT.com
1 September, 2012, 20:55

The Estonian Prosecutor's Office has announced it will not launch a criminal trial over claims of shocking harassment in the military, when two ethnically Russian conscripts were allegedly made to dig their own graves.

The case went public on Thursday when several Estonian newspapers reported that the country's Defense Ministry was looking into a report of officers hazing the two young brothers.

On August 13 in the military field camp Myanniku, several officers made the Russian cadets to take a series of personal training exercises which ended with digging their own graves in the forest at night, Estonian Postimees newspaper reported.

“They said that if we go missing nobody will cry for us. That we will be sent home in body bags, and because we have firearms with us, it will look like defection,” one of the victims told the newspaper.

The names of the brothers have not been disclosed. The only thing which reported was that they are the sons of a wealthy Russian businessman.

Meanwhile, the accused officers deny any such intimidation tactics, saying the soldiers were just performing a regular night time exercise of digging trenches.

Estonia's Prosecutor`s Office seems to buy into that version, as on Friday it announced that the case contains no criminal elements and thus no trial will be initiated.

[TsarSamuil]

Estonian paper uses Buchenwald victims for slimming pills ad.

RT.com
7 September, 2012, 13:12



Exhausted concentration camp torture victims – that is what happy owners of new slim bodies will look like, according to an Estonian newspaper. The paper illustrated an ad for slimming pills with a gloomy photo of prisoners.

The cynical inscription near the World War II concentration camp victims. said: “One, Two, Three… Dr Mengele slimming pills work wonders for you!” Below read: “There were no thickset people in Buchenwald!”

The joyful appeal referred to one of the first and the largest of the concentration camps on German soil, Buchenwald, and Dr Josef Mengele, infamous for performing human experiments on camp inmates, including children, for which he was called the "Angel of Death".

While the pill advertisers have not provided any comments on their choice, the advertisement has already caused outrage within the country.

The deputy-mayor of the country’s capital, Tallinn, was the first to give his reaction.

“Do you, the respected editors of Eesti Ekspress, happen to know that a total of 56, 549 people were tormented at Buchenwald?” local media quotes Mihhail Kõlvart as asking. “And that Dr Mengele staged monstrous experiments on Jews, by the way not in Buchenwald, but in Auschwitz? That he personally selected the arriving prisoners and personally sent over 40,000 people to gas chambers? Do you find it amusing?”

Chairwoman of the Jewish Community of Estonia Alla Yacobson condemned the Holocaust jokes and “marketing catches” on the pages of the country’s Postimees newspaper.

“The cynical jokes about the Holocaust illustrated by the photo of the concentration camp prisoners not only trespass the bounds of good taste, but are vivid evidence that our society experiences large problems with moral and ethical values,” she said.

This is not the only example of Estonia using World War II atrocities for public purposes. Not long ago the national gas company GasTerm Eesti used the photo of Auschwitz concentration camp front gate to advertise its products.

The gate inscription "Arbeit macht frei" (Work sets you free) was seen very clearly, as well as the company’s caption "Gas heating – flexible, convenient, and effective.”

The photo was later removed from the company's website and a short apology was posted instead: “If a photo posted here earlier brought anyone any inconvenience we sincerely apologize.”

Both advertisements were labeled as a “Victorious march of immorality” by the Jewish Community of Estonia.

Russia has slammed the advertisement, which mocked “the memory of millions.”

“We consider these facts as a deeply immoral mockery of the memory of the millions of people of different nationalities, who were brutally tortured in Nazi concentration camps during WWII. Such a disgrace which the newspaper’s management is trying to present as a ‘joke’, should not be the case in countries that claim to be of a civilized status,” Russia’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

Russia expressed its hope that Estonian authorities will take measures to stop such jokes of the victims of fascism and will call responsible authors to account.

[TsarSamuil]

Belarus calls upon Latvia to stop making heroes out of war criminals.

25.09.2012 19:21

MINSK, 25 September (BelTA) – Head of the Belarusian delegation, Resident Representative of Belarus in the UN Office and other international organizations in Geneva Mikhail Khvostov condemned the installation of a monument to the Latvian SS legion in Latvia. He said that the fact is an insult to the memory of hundreds of thousands of Belarusian civilians that were killed by punitive troops. By doing it, the Latvian authorities cynically ignore results of the Nuremberg Trials and results of World War Two. Mikhail Khvostov made the statement at the 21st session of the UN Human Rights Council in Geneva, representatives of the Belarusian Foreign Ministry told BelTA.

Mikhail Khvostov called upon the Latvian authorities to stop the policy of making heroes out of criminals. He said the practice was not compatible with goals and principles of the UN Charter.

The Belarusian delegation also called upon the UN Human Right Council and the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to take a closer look at the recent manifestations of religious intolerance with regard to Muslims.

The same day Belarusian-Russian consultations on human rights matters took place as part of the UN Human Rights Council session. The sides discussed a large number of matters relating to cooperation in human rights bodies of the United Nations Organization and came up with concrete avenues for taking actions in this area.

[TsarSamuil]

Moscow accuses EU of human rights violations over Nazi rallies.

RT.com
19 December, 2012, 19:15



Waffen-SS veterans’ meetings and marches, which are annually held in Latvia and Estonia, is a violation of human rights and international law, says the Russian Foreign Ministry.

The Nuremberg Trials held after the WWII condemned the Waffen-SS as a criminal organization. The decisions of the tribunal are still in place and are “part of the international legal system,” stated Konstantin Dolgov, the Ministry's Special Representative for Human Rights.

That means that the gatherings of the Nazi military veterans is a breach of the law he said while presenting a report on human rights violations in the European Union.

In Estonia the annual parades are held in honor of veterans from the 20th Estonian SS Division – which fought in the war for the Nazi side – and their supporters.

Similar events are organized in neighboring Latvia, where ex-members of the local Waffen-SS Legion annually gather in the capital Riga to commemorate the group’s founding in 1943. On March 16, 1944, they engaged in combat against the Red Army.

Nationalist and neo-Nazi movements have been gaining popularity in some former Soviet republics since the collapse of the USSR in 1991. The reason behind that is that many in the Baltic States and Western Ukraine consider the Soviet era even worse than the Nazi occupation.

Russia has repeatedly criticized attempts to re-write history, glorify Nazism and rehabilitate Nazi crimes.


Veterans of 20th Waffen Grenadier Division of the SS (1st Estonian) meet on the Sinimaed hills (RIA Novosti / Alexei Olis'ko)

[TsarSamuil]

Pro-Russian Party Tops Latvian Opinion Poll.

RIGA, March 3 (RIA Novosti) – Latvia's Harmony Center party, predominantly backed by ethnic Russians, has picked up support in a new opinion poll published by the Latvian Facts bureau.

Support for Harmony Center rose to 26 percent, from 25 percent in a previous survey a month ago. The poll showed Latvia's ruling Unity party is the second popular party (14.3 percent), followed by the Union of Greens and Farmers ( 9.3 percent).

The poll results are based on February's interviews with 1,000 Latvians.

Following 2011 parliamentary election, Harmony Center obtained 31 out of 100 seats in the parliament. However, it remains in opposition as majority ethnic-Latvian parties believe its ideology is against the interests of the Latvian state.

Ethnic Russians make up almost 30% of Latvia's 2 million population. About 100,000 of them have been given special non-citizen passports.

Latvia maintains that it was illegally incorporated into the USSR in 1940 and then occupied by the Soviets until 1991, during which time hundreds of thousands of Russians immigrated into the republic.

[TsarSamuil]

Latvian culture minister urges citizens ‘don’t speak Russian’

RT.com
March 07, 2013 13:06

Latvia’s Minister of Culture has called on his countrymen “not to give in” to speaking Russian in schools, kindergartens and with the Russian-language media, in the country where over 37 per cent of the population are native Russian-speakers.

"We have to be very solid, consistent in our daily lives - we need to speak Latvian. This is our country, we are proud of it. There should be one type of schools, and kindergartens, we should be speaking Latvian to the media. And not give in and swindle. We should firmly protect our language, culture, and country,” Minister Janeta Jaunzeme-Grende told reporters on Thursday.

In Latvia, the state funds kindergartens and schools teaching in both Latvian and Russian. But Jaunzeme-Grende is part of a conservative National Union government that supports creating a monolingual Latvia.

According to the Minister, the best way to achieve integration in Latvia is by strengthening the values of the government and society.

“There is no better way to integrate a society than to strengthen the state. If we are strong, then everyone will want to speak Latvian to prove that they belong to this beautiful country.”

Latvia has a population of 2 million, over 37 per cent of which are native Russian-speakers. The country has only one official language, Latvian, while Russian has the status of a foreign language.

Back in February 2012 a majority of Latvian voters rejected a proposal that would have made Russian a second official language. The result was expected, as the country's top politicians had spoken out against the idea. The referendum took place after 183,000 Latvians petitioned for it.

The status of the Russian-speaking minority – who are not only Russians ethnically, but also Belarusians and Ukrainians – is painful in modern Latvia. The hundreds of thousands who now carry ‘alien passports’ moved to live in the then-Soviet republic after 1945, or their descendants. When Latvia became independent in the 1990s, the new leaders were determined to make it a mono-national country.

Two decades have hardly been enough to integrate the Latvian Russians into the new society. Those who fail rigid language tests are still denied citizenship and all the privileges it brings. The use of Russian is discouraged. In schools at least 60 per cent of all classes from grade 10 through 12 must be taught in Latvian, even if all the pupils are from Russian families and have problems speaking the state language.

On top of that in November the Latvian authorities have banned a referendum on automatic citizenship to the country’s more than 300,000 non-citizens citing the country’s principles, international law and security reasons.

The majority of non-citizens who make up about 15 per cent of Latvia’s population are Russian speakers.

An alien passport-holder is allowed to reside in Latvian territory, but has no political rights, such as voting or holding official posts.


Pupils from Russian schools in Latvian capital protest education reform in Riga (AFP Photo / Ilmar Znotis)

[TsarSamuil]

Latvian SS Veterans March to Soviet Songs.

RIGA, March 16 (RIA Novosti) – The World War II standoff was resurrected in music on Saturday, when Latvian veterans of the Waffen-SS had to hold a rally to old Soviet tunes played by an ideology-conscious street musician.

The surviving members of the Latvian Legion, an 110,000-strong formation created by the Waffen-SS in 1943 using primarily Latvian conscripts, hold annual marches in country’s capital Riga since the early 1990s.

This year, their route took them by an accordion player making a living by performing in the streets of Riga – who, upon the legionnaires’ approach, treated them to a medley of classic Soviet war songs.

The playlist included snippets from the self-explanatory “Victory Day” and “Farewell of Slavianka,” a song associated with World War II in the Soviet Union ever since it featured in the classic war drama “The Cranes Are Flying,” which won the Cannes Film Festival in 1958.

This is the second year in a row that the accordion player, whose name remained unknown, stages his ideological diversion.

But this time, the Waffen-SS veterans were able to counteract the musical assault thanks to a bagpiper in their ranks, who managed to drown out some of the tunes played by the accordionist.

The rally gathered several hundred participants, including a handful of nationalist lawmakers. In addition to the accordionist, they were opposed by Latvian antifascist activists, though the parties were kept from clashing by a 1,200-strong police force at the scene.

Riga authorities banned the rally last week, citing safety concerns, but the ban was overturned on court appeal.

Supporters of Latvian Waffen-SS veterans say that the legionnaires were not fascists but patriots fighting for the independence of Latvia, which was forcefully annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 along with Estonia and Lithuania.

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Russia Blasts Latvian SS Veterans March, Urges Response.

MOSCOW, March 18 (RIA Novosti) – Russia urged the international community Monday to join it in condemning this weekend’s rally commemorating Latvian soldiers that served alongside the invading Nazi army in World War II.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Alexander Lukashevich said Saturday’s rally made heroes out of former member of the Latvian Waffen SS legion and local Nazi collaborators.

“We hope that the revival of pro-Nazi sympathies in Latvia, which is a European Union and NATO member, will trigger an appropriate reaction from the world community,” Lukashevich said.

Surviving members of the Latvian Legion, a 110,000-strong formation created by the Waffen-SS in 1943 that drew primarily on Latvian conscripts, have held annual marches in the former Soviet Baltic nation’s capital, Riga, since the early 1990s. This year’s event was attended by several hundred participants, including a handful of nationalist lawmakers.

Any celebration of the Nazi Germany is viewed with almost universal revulsion across the former Soviet Union, but the invading force was seen by many in Latvia at the time as liberators from their communist rulers.

The rally’s route this year took participants past a street accordion player who struck up a medley of classic Soviet war songs.

Riga’s authorities had initially forbidden the rally from taking place, citing safety concerns, but the ban was overturned after a legal appeal.

Latvia’s police have initiated administrative proceedings against five participants in the march who face fines of up to $500 or a 15-day prison sentence, a police spokesman said on Monday.