With Russian fighter jets active on its border, Latvia fears it will suffer the same fate as Ukraine. As the Baltic state goes to the polls, Charlotte McDonald-Gibson reports from Riga on a country living in fear.
Historical parallels are not hard to find at Latvia’s Museum of Occupation as the country prepares for elections overshadowed by the Ukraine crisis.
Gunars Nagels, the museum director, recalls the first presence of Soviet troops on Latvian soil in 1939, just before the start of a five-decade occupation. “They were supposed to stay in their bases, just like in Crimea,” he says.
Mr Nagels also sees worrying similarities between Russia’s actions today and Nazi forays into neighbours’ territories before the Second World War. “If you look at the excuses being put forward for what is happening in Ukraine, you can see what Hitler did,” says Mr Nagels. “First he complained about the status of Germans in the Sudetenland. So there was an agreement they could have Sudetenland, and he took the rest of Czechoslovakia. Next up was the status of Germans in Poland. So they took over Poland.”
With a border with Russia, a long history as part of the Soviet Union, and the largest Russian-speaking community in the European Union, many Latvians fear they may be next in President Vladimir Putin’s sights.
Already there is a massive increase in activity by Russian fighter jets and warships along the borders of Latvia and neighbouring Estonia and Lithuania. Last month, a Russian diplomat issued an ominous warning about the “far-reaching, unfortunate consequences” of what he called the “creeping restriction of the Russian language” in the Baltic states.
Notice: Russian Jets Image is From File.
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