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00:03:14Talk show "Opinion", my name is Igor Poznyak, good evening, and here
00:03:18we will gather, analyze, discuss, and detail a variety of opinions so
00:03:22that you can formulate your own.
00:03:25Our older viewers, of course, remember that if Soviet television
00:03:28showed such art, it did not bode
00:03:32well.
00:03:58It so happened that Tchaikovsky's famous Swan Lake in the last
00:04:02years of the Soviet Union became a symbol of upheaval, and
00:04:05later a geopolitical catastrophe.
00:04:09But several decades later, in the summer of
00:04:112026, this legendary ballet is destined
00:04:15to become another symbol of monstrous and cynical
00:04:18Russophobia in our Baltic
00:04:20neighbors. The Minister, if I may say so,
00:04:23of Culture of Lithuania, Mr.
00:04:26Alsys, just a couple of weeks into this position, stated, quote:
00:04:30"Tchaikovsky has no place on the stage of the Lithuanian theater." In this sense,
00:04:34the new broom in the Lithuanian government is absolutely
00:04:37old-fashioned, so to speak, in the spirit of the entire Baltic Russophobic
00:04:41tradition, and there are democratic taboos
00:04:44everywhere. Raimonds Pauls' music is banned
00:04:48in Latvia. In Estonia, a threat to national security
00:04:51was seen not only in Russian film dubbing,
00:04:54which is now unacceptable, but also in
00:04:57Russian-language recipes for...
00:05:14bottom: we will discuss here and now a variety of opinions. Next to me in this
00:05:17studio is: Mikhail Oksenuk, Deputy of the House
00:05:20of Representatives of the National Assembly of Belarus, hello, good, Andrey
00:05:24Starikov, editor-in-chief of the information agency Balt News,
00:05:28we welcome you, Alexey Roslikov, Deputy
00:05:32of the Saeima of Latvia from 2022 to 2025,
00:05:35good evening. Traditionally, another interlocutor connects via video link,
00:05:39Lithuanian politician and businessman.
00:05:43Antanas Kandrotas,
00:05:59Russophobic theme,
00:06:03which, if not every day, then every week
00:06:07grows with new informational occasions, including
00:06:11with the подачи of the wonderful
00:06:14portal led by Andrey Dmitrievich,
00:06:17well, we'll get back to that later.
00:06:20Baltic Russophobia,
00:06:23where do its roots grow from? I remember very well in
00:06:27my childhood, but these were still the late Soviet years,
00:06:30there was such a joke, and I grew up near the Latvian
00:06:34border, that if, for example, in Daugavpils or in
00:06:37Riga, and these were still the late Soviet years, the end of
00:06:40the eighties, you ask: "How
00:06:43do I get
00:06:45to this store?", they will definitely tell you the opposite direction. Do you remember such
00:06:49a joke? I remember such a joke, especially such jokes
00:06:53became popular at the time
00:06:56of the collapse of the Union, this is the end of the eighties, beginning of the nineties years,
00:07:00when even a simple ticket for a ride in
00:07:03transport for 5 kopecks, when a Russian-speaking person asks
00:07:07from a Latvian, for example, or a Latvian woman,
00:07:10well, they said "Russian pig." Even a ticket is a pity, these situations I
00:07:14heard, I remember.
00:07:18Well, the roots, the roots, in fact, I think
00:07:21that well, probably the creation,
00:07:24the creation of the very creation
00:07:27of the state, Latvia, Lithuania,
00:07:31if we go so far back in history,
00:07:34then when did Latvia actually get real Latvian
00:07:37statehood, that's exactly from...
00:07:411918. That was the first
00:07:44mention of an independent Latvian state,
00:07:48the Soviet Socialist Latvian Soviet Socialist Republic, well,
00:07:51the LitBel, then they united, separated, this
00:07:55republic was not destined to exist for long, but
00:07:59the fact is that not all
00:08:01people, I am deeply convinced, not all people in Latvia
00:08:05think so and then not all people
00:08:08thought so at the moment of creation, well, thank God I think that...
00:08:46We will talk about politicians specifically, because I found statistics for you up to
00:08:502022, so that I can give you these absolutely official figures later. After
00:08:542022, they stopped publishing them. In Riga,
00:08:57for example, people with Russian as their native language make up
00:08:5957%, so Riga is a dominant Russian
00:09:02city. The problem is that only so-called ethnic
00:09:06Latvians are allowed to enter power, who, as
00:09:09a result, form this foreign policy and your personal
00:09:13colleagues' perception of Latvia in general. Of course, in our country,
00:09:16there are about 10% of people who, succumbing to this
00:09:20policy, transmit it to people on the street, both through insults and through
00:09:23all sorts of unpleasant statements. I will also give you a gift, we have such
00:09:27comments, like one can say the word "vomit," so on
00:09:31the internet, Russians are called "vomit
00:09:33of occupiers," and this is considered normal today, when
00:09:37a person with a Latvian name and a Latvian surname leaves such comments
00:09:41on the internet. They will not be prosecuted for it, so I will tell you this, that
00:09:45today the external, so to speak, temperature towards our country
00:09:49is formed by a handful of politicians, but not
00:09:52by the people. I did not by chance, perhaps even partially
00:09:56provocatively, start with this example, because you are absolutely
00:09:59right, that
00:10:01it is precisely the Lithuanian, Latvian,
00:10:05Estonian authorities and the Baltic
00:10:09people, as they say in a famous city.
00:10:25you are undoubtedly encountering a vast
00:10:28array of diverse information about
00:10:32the Baltics. What surprises
00:10:35you most, I understand that it's difficult to surprise a journalist with anything, what
00:10:39surprises you most about the current
00:10:41positioning of these, let's say, essentially
00:10:44nationalistic
00:10:47sentiments?
00:10:50Those who are at the helm, nothing has surprised me for a long
00:10:53time, but the fish rots from the
00:10:56head, regarding this Russophobia,
00:10:59whether it's everyday or political, it's a kind
00:11:02of symbiosis, because politicians, those who seized
00:11:05power in the early nineties, they set
00:11:08the norm, they set the standard, they
00:11:11show that it's possible, that it's normal, that it's
00:11:14promising for career growth, for
00:11:18personal enrichment. Residents of Latvia remember when
00:11:22it was said in the Latvian parliament, in
00:11:25the Saeima, "Russians, we don't need you to know our
00:11:28language, we need you to know your place." And this is,
00:11:32in general, a roadmap, it's a guide to
00:11:36action, it's goal-setting, and those stories you started with
00:11:40are exactly about that: to create
00:11:42maximally unfriendly, inconvenient,
00:11:46hellish conditions so that Russians leave. "Suitcase,
00:11:50train station, Russia," they said for all 25,
00:11:53now 30 years, starting with the Singing Revolution in 1988,
00:11:56when those who fled after the war began to arrive
00:12:00in Soviet Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania.
00:12:03This is the first wave of migration,
00:12:07these are descendants of Nazis, these are collaborators,
00:12:10these are their children, these are their grandchildren, this is a politically
00:12:13infected public. Did they love us? Of course not,
00:12:17they hated us, they hate us, they want to replay
00:12:20the war, that military fervor and that
00:12:24pressure on...
00:13:25that the people and the government are completely different
00:13:28things. Certain
00:13:30decrees, of course, stem from this,
00:13:34that if you don't create an enemy, then you can't
00:13:37confirm and explain to the people the expenses for
00:13:41military needs. We've already quickly
00:13:44set a record in Lithuania, already
00:13:48one-third of the budget goes to military
00:13:51expenses, and how to explain it to the people? It's very
00:13:55simple: ignite Russophobia and then
00:13:58spend the money
00:14:01of taxpayers, then you can borrow on behalf
00:14:05of the state, and so on and so forth.
00:14:08They absolutely need Russophobia as
00:14:11a tool for pumping out money.
00:14:15It's curious how much this, in quotation marks, cow will
00:14:18still give milk. Let's watch a report
00:14:21from our correspondent right now. On July
00:14:3724, the Latvian parliament, in an emergency procedure, banned the import from Russia and
00:14:40Belarus of books, newspapers, video games, and even children's toys. How Soviet dolls
00:14:44or board games threaten the security of the country, the deputies did not explain. A little
00:14:48earlier, the Minister of Culture of Latvia ordered to remove
00:14:51the Russian language from all institutions of his department by July 30, including.
00:14:57The theater can continue to create performances in Russian,
00:15:00preserving its artistic originality and enriching
00:15:03the cultural space of Latvia. Art should not lose its
00:15:07diversity, however, public communication
00:15:11of state institutions performs a different
00:15:13function. The educational sphere also underwent total derusification.
00:15:17In Estonia, since last academic year, all kindergartens and elementary schools switched
00:15:21to Estonian. In one of the colleges, after the ban on teaching in... they could not
00:15:25recruit half of the students. Free vocational education is now available only in
00:15:29the state language. In Lithuania, the Russian language, formally protected by the constitution,
00:15:33has become an irritating factor. In one year, the Language Inspectorate received 50
00:15:36complaints about its use in public places in Vilnius. The Minister of Education
00:15:40announced the abandonment of Russian schools; only educational institutions for
00:15:43national minorities in EU languages will remain. This transition is possible as early as September
00:15:47of this year. In Latvia, since January, Russian has been excluded from the school curriculum and is not
00:15:50offered as a second foreign language. Moreover, linguicide is observed not only in
00:15:54schools. The Latvian parliament also approved the closure of public media broadcasting in
00:15:58Russian. Calls are being made to deprive FM frequencies from private Russian-language
00:16:01radio stations. There is no more Russian language in Latvian ATMs. The banks themselves were officially forbidden to serve clients.
00:16:05банкам запретили официально обслуживать кли.
00:16:37the Second World War, but then they had to carefully hide it.
00:16:41So, going back to the question about real
00:16:44fascism, real nationalism, is what
00:16:47we are talking about now, what we saw in the story, fit this
00:16:51definition in its essence?
00:16:54Absolutely, of course, it fits this definition, and we
00:16:57understand nationalism, even
00:17:00radical nationalism, this is a vivid, that is,
00:17:03what is happening today in these countries, which we are talking about, here you need to
00:17:07understand that our neighbors wanted
00:17:10to hurt us in the economic sphere.
00:17:14They shot themselves in the foot, nothing came of it.
00:17:17They ruined their economy, their railways, ports, those
00:17:20that, by the way, the occupying Soviet Union gave them,
00:17:24built. Today they have taken on the hateful,
00:17:28hateful, yes, they have taken on the spiritual, and then they paid
00:17:32for membership in the European Union, yes, absolutely right, absolutely
00:17:35right, and today... we see how the struggle is going on for
00:17:39the minds of the citizens of the Baltic republics,
00:17:43everything that reminds of itself is erased,
00:17:46reminds of the Russian language, of Russian
00:17:49civilization, of Eastern Slavic civilization, that is,
00:17:53an attempt to destroy everything that is associated with the Russian language,
00:17:57including children's books, including fairy tales, including
00:18:00works of art, including simple Russian speech, what
00:18:04is this called? Is it not nationalism?
00:18:07Masha and the Bear, a cartoon where Masha tries on a military cap,
00:18:11is discussed in the British parliament, and they find in it a threat to
00:18:15national, British
00:18:18security and independence, so what more can be said?
00:18:22Alexey Viktorovich, you used not entirely
00:18:25ethereal words,
00:18:29I will also recall from personal experience. I was on a business trip many
00:18:33years ago in Riga, living in a hotel, unfortunately, on the first
00:18:36floor. And the first floor is
00:18:39always where conversations are heard through an open window, and you
00:18:43know,
00:18:45maybe this is not a representative story, please correct
00:18:48me,
00:18:51but local teenagers, I don't know, young
00:18:53people, drinking light
00:18:57alcohol, were discussing something
00:19:00there in Latvian, partially English,
00:19:03but swore in good,
00:19:06choice Russian. This is a classic, yes, this
00:19:09is a classic, this is a classic. A huge number of words
00:19:12at the moment purebred Latvians borrow from the Russian
00:19:16language. The Russian language is much richer, it is much more colorful,
00:19:19and swear words are one of those words that express emotions as brightly
00:19:23as possible, therefore, here borrowing is absolute, and here
00:19:26nothing is constrained, as if Russophobia is
00:19:30another thing, again, there is a question of politics, there is a question of everyday life, yes,
00:19:34therefore, in everyday matters, so to speak, everyone perfectly uses...
00:20:07and he is not ashamed of this word. They tried to bring him before the ethics commission in
00:20:11our Riga City Council, where I was the leader of the faction until recently.
00:20:14The dominant number of parties refused to even deal with him, they consider it
00:20:18normal. So imagine, today the vice-mayor of our society
00:20:21says that everyone who is not conditionally
00:20:24Latvian, for example, Belarusians, are monkeys. Imagine, this is
00:20:28how you talk about formatting, that is, this is not just a question of decency or
00:20:32indecency, it is a question of
00:20:35political positioning. At the moment, liberals,
00:20:39centrists, leftists, rightists, whoever
00:20:42you want, have disappeared. We have today political nationalism.
00:20:46All parties that today enter the ruling bloc with the permission of Brussels, they must be...
00:21:20this scandalous story that recently happened in Estonia,
00:21:24when a meat producer posted
00:21:27an image with two men with
00:21:29smiles, grilling meat,
00:21:33and a slogan was written in Estonian, but translated into
00:21:37Russian, it sounds as follows: "Proper
00:21:40grilling makes bitter onions sweet." Well,
00:21:44the whole problem is that the word "onion" in colloquial context in
00:21:47Estonia, well, translated from Estonian, can be used as
00:21:51a derogatory nickname for the Russian-speaking
00:21:54population. So, that's roughly what you are talking about.
00:21:57Well, look, it's not all so homogeneous, there's a political
00:22:01discussion, even the locals argue about who Russians are,
00:22:04whether they are shredded, whether they are monkeys, they need to be
00:22:07shredded or marinated or fried.
00:22:10So, it's not all homogeneous here. This
00:22:14discussion of how to bully all
00:22:17those who are alien, and dissenting, and...
00:22:20speaking other languages, it exists. We need to
00:22:23take this into account, because in the context of even their pressure on the Russian
00:22:27language, they themselves fall into a kind of schizophrenia.
00:22:30If we observe, they tried to make the Russian language instrumental
00:22:34in fighting against us. I remember, in Riga there was a conference
00:22:38of the fugitive Mansky from Russia and the
00:22:40foreign agent "Russian is not Putin's
00:22:43language." They tried to use Russian to fight against
00:22:46us, placed media
00:22:50editorial offices there. Belarusians know how Lithuania became a stronghold and
00:22:53such a farm for fugitive
00:22:55zmagars. But now, perhaps, this is even to our
00:22:59advantage, their primitive Russophobia,
00:23:02xenophobia, rejection of everything else, has reached a point
00:23:06where the Russian language is bad for them in any manifestation, even as
00:23:10a weapon against us. But before that, for many years, there really
00:23:13was a discussion about how to use Russian, what TV channels
00:23:17were needed, how to fool Russians. Now they have
00:23:20abandoned this. Russians are absolute marginalized people, they are on
00:23:23the periphery, they are outside the agenda, they are outside the information
00:23:27space, as if they don't exist. And as
00:23:30a consequence, yes, there is only one line of behavior left: to create
00:23:34such conditions that everyone leaves.
00:23:37Rusify, those who don't want to, those who resist, criminal cases,
00:23:41prison, imprisonment, even
00:23:43physical elimination, I believe we can
00:23:47observe, they are capable of going that far.
00:24:20a very scandalous story last year, in the year of the 80th anniversary
00:24:23of the Great Victory, in Latvia they expelled
00:24:2798-year-old veteran
00:24:30Vasily Moskalyonok. Everyone talked about this
00:24:34story, but this story is not
00:24:37unique. I think this is also such
00:24:40a monstrous and cynical slap in the face to
00:24:44the generation of those who once liberated this
00:24:47land. Such a situation? What you
00:24:51mentioned about Latvia, similar things happened in Lithuania, and
00:24:55people who extend, for example, in
00:24:58Lithuania, I can say more about Lithuania, who extend, for example,
00:25:01their residence permit, there is a mandatory question,
00:25:05"Whose Crimea is it?" And there have been many stories
00:25:08where people answered, or I don't know, or answered that
00:25:12it belongs to Russia, they lost their, among other things, I
00:25:15know one story where a person lived in Lithuania for
00:25:1840 years. And they did not extend his residence permit, so
00:25:22these algorithms work.
00:25:26I want to add to the conversation that you
00:25:29mentioned these Estonians who were grilling meat, well, in
00:25:32Lithuania, all the media just
00:25:36rejoiced, praised this advertisement, said,
00:25:40"How clever the Estonians are, how original they came up with it, and
00:25:43how good it all is." That is, in Lithuania
00:25:47the legitimization of these...
00:27:08a lot of films about the war, I
00:27:11watch a lot of documentaries about the war, I know quite a lot of facts about the Great
00:27:15Patriotic War, but what I
00:27:18read,
00:27:20preparing for this program, honestly shocked me,
00:27:24truly shocked me. So, in 2019 in
00:27:27Tallinn, at a public
00:27:29transport stop, a tram stop, they tried
00:27:33to differentiate, although this sign didn't hang for long,
00:27:37to differentiate "this part of the stop
00:27:40is for those who speak Russian, this part
00:27:43of the stop is for real
00:27:45Estonians." I think this is not
00:27:49just nationalism, this is simply
00:27:52some kind of incredible, unconcealed
00:27:56fascism in the very center of Europe. What is the international
00:27:59community looking at, what is the international community looking at?
00:28:32Yes, but it seems more like
00:28:36this, you know, little dogs, they usually
00:28:39run behind your back, and from there, this is the situation, this situation,
00:28:43which is happening today in the Baltics, reminds me of the beginning
00:28:46of the nineties during the collapse of the Soviet Union, when older guys
00:28:50took a little boy, put
00:28:53him somewhere on the street, hid themselves, a guy walked by,
00:28:57he bothered this guy, provoked him, that one grabbed his
00:29:00ear and then they came up to you, "Well, what's up, little guy?"
00:29:10That's the situation we have today, in my opinion, with the Baltic
00:29:13countries. Against the backdrop of the conflict in Ukraine, an island of instability is being created on Russia's borders, on the northwestern borders of Russia. It is clear that
00:29:17it may not reach a hot phase, but it forces Russia
00:29:20to turn its head in that direction.
00:29:23This is nothing else but support, this
00:29:27is all that we are talking about, we state the facts that far from
00:29:30all residents of the Baltics...
00:29:33support such a state of affairs. Well, it's similar to what we had in 2020,
00:29:371-2% of the population formed an opinion,
00:29:41tried to impose it, the majority for some reason
00:29:44believed it, and today what is happening, I am deeply convinced that it
00:29:48is happening with the blessing, with the consent, and perhaps
00:29:50even at the behest of Western coordinators?
00:29:54Please, I usually clarify such
00:29:57an assessment, it often comes from colleagues, moreover, it is probably our
00:30:01tradition to deny the Baltics
00:30:03subjectivity, they mean nothing, they decide
00:30:07nothing, there is Apcom in Washington, Brussels has
00:30:11a big boss, they act on orders. But if
00:30:14we analyze their recent history, political practice, we
00:30:18will see that here is a situation where the tail
00:30:21directly wags the dog. Who forms
00:30:24the Eastern policy of the EU, the policy of the EU in the Eastern
00:30:27direction? Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia. Let's take the documents,
00:30:31the body of documents of the European Parliament, who writes them? What concerns
00:30:35relations, EU, Russia, and so
00:30:38on.
00:30:40Plus to your argument, who, who comes to
00:30:44the position of European Commissioner, from where they come, determines this
00:30:48"calos". Therefore, we should not deprive them of subjectivity, it
00:30:51puts us into a trap, makes our foreign policy
00:30:55vulnerable. These are those who, in general,
00:30:58fanned the Ukrainian conflict, including the conflict in
00:31:01Ukraine, themselves after the Eastern Partnership summit
00:31:04in Vilnius. These are those who throw
00:31:07fuel on the fire, these are those who impose this
00:31:11absolutely primitive practice of discrimination against Russians, further.
00:31:47366 administrative cases, with penalties provided,
00:31:51increased penalties, which for individuals
00:31:54will increase from 35 to a maximum of
00:31:57195 euros, for legal entities up to
00:32:00700 euros, in individual cases up to 5,000
00:32:03euros. A good addition
00:32:06to the budget. It turns out that for 2025 there were
00:32:10610 fines, meaning they haven't even met the target yet, they will still
00:32:13reach it. I always... Yes, this is my personal pain, since I
00:32:17have been living in these sandals for 42 years. The problem
00:32:20of this aggression of nationalism started a long time ago,
00:32:2326 years ago, I am 42 years old today. Fights between Russian and
00:32:27Latvian children in Latvia were an absolute
00:32:30norm. At 14 years old, we were pitted against
00:32:33each other, and we really fought in the street, district against district,
00:32:37Latvians against Russians. So you must understand that the problem
00:32:41was laid, originated, raised
00:32:43in advance. Today you are talking about the world community, but why in
00:32:472000 did no one notice that Russian children
00:32:50were convinced that they should go to a Latvian school and break windows in the opposite
00:32:54direction, and today those same children are already over 30, they have also
00:32:58been diluted by our repatriates, who in the 1940s lived with their
00:33:01parents or were later born already in America in special conditions, were
00:33:04returned back. So today the result
00:33:07of '22 and '26 is a fairly clear,
00:33:11measured and correctly constructed work, starting from the
00:33:15moment when our Latvia gained its independence. Therefore, I suggest that today
00:33:19we not kick, we have a huge historical, let's say,
00:33:22process, in which certain mistakes were
00:33:25made, it will resolve itself, it will pass. Today it has not resolved itself and has not
00:33:29passed. Therefore, we have a clearly charged group of political
00:33:33politicians, political figures who
00:33:35are set on the most open,
00:33:39let's say, aggressive actions, they simply will not stop.
00:33:42Well, it's obvious that now those same
00:33:45politicians who, as if with their mother's milk, absorbed
00:33:48these very sentiments, and perhaps these very politicians once
00:33:52walked with you, district against district, and this is the whole situation, we
00:33:56today, starting from twenty-two to twenty-six, adopt
00:34:00an average of 10 laws per year in Latvia, that is, one
00:34:03law per month, the parliament rests for 2 months, no tractor factory can
00:34:07boast of such results, 10 laws per year directed against
00:34:10Russians, 10, as of today, since twenty-two, more than 40 laws have been adopted.
00:35:15Mikhail Petrovich, you are a parliamentarian, so speaking in legal
00:35:18terms, what does this
00:35:21mean, I will try
00:35:24to use this word very carefully,
00:35:27is it not
00:35:29genocide,
00:35:32of a people that we are dealing with, if we dig
00:35:35deep and look at the concept of the word
00:35:38genocide, then it smells exactly like that, this is
00:35:42the extermination of an entire nation, the Russian nation.
00:35:49the extermination of a nation by any means, even if it's not killing, not bringing to death, but it's,
00:35:52let's say, silence, it's turning
00:35:55a person into another nationality, if you will, it's roughly the
00:35:59same thing, if we don't talk about genocide of a people, then we can
00:36:03safely talk about genocide of a nation, therefore of course such actions are
00:36:07very, very on the verge of genocide, but here I
00:36:10fully support you, by the way, Dmitrievich, let's go back to...
00:36:14the
00:37:28areas where Russians, Russian-speakers live compactly, well, with such
00:37:31disdain, it has always been
00:37:35the case, as for genocide,
00:37:38I agree with my colleague, yes, genocide, because if we look
00:37:42at EU documents, UN documents, documents
00:37:45of the International Court of Justice, then genocide is not only physical
00:37:49liquidation, it is also deportations of peoples, we
00:37:52observe this, it is depriving
00:37:55peoples of the right to language, to...
00:38:27genocide, but our assessment, a political assessment, I believe,
00:38:31can be such, and such it should be,
00:38:34and I will allow myself once again within the framework of our program
00:38:38to recall a personal situation, I already recalled it a few
00:38:41broadcasts ago in a different context, well, now I simply
00:38:45cannot not talk about
00:38:48this, more than 10 years ago
00:38:52my interview in Tallinn in a business center with
00:38:55a veteran of the Great Patriotic War.
00:38:58I really want to believe that he is still alive and
00:39:01well, but when the head
00:39:04of this very business center, passing by, heard that we were
00:39:08speaking Russian, we were simply asked to go out
00:39:12onto the street.
00:39:15Andrey Viktorovich, could such a situation have occurred
00:39:18in Latvia? Well, look, in 2023,
00:39:222,500 people who have
00:39:26a residence permit, absolutely necessary for staying in the territory of the Latvian
00:39:29Republic, are being brought to the status of future
00:39:32deportation. 25,000 people. So what do you think, how
00:39:35are our people treated today, today, in general? These
00:39:3925,000 people should have been taken to Russia or
00:39:43Belarus, wherever they want, but only outside the European Union. Therefore,
00:39:46today, if you call for any humanity and the opportunity
00:39:49to assess, let's say, the emotional state of our authorities, it is absolutely
00:39:53meaningless. I told you about this case when
00:39:56a purebred Latvian woman with two
00:39:59children from a Russian guy, who has a Russian passport with a Latvian
00:40:03residence permit, wakes up in the morning to find herself being pulled out of bed and taken to the
00:40:06border, and the minister, who for humanitarian reasons was
00:40:10obliged to reunite this family and return the boy, personally
00:40:14told me, "I don't care, let her pack her bags and go with him," and the purebred Latvian
00:40:17woman with two purebred Latvian children, with civil passports, goes to
00:40:21Russia and writes to me, "I am happy," so what
00:40:24will we discuss, yes, and I think, Andrey Dmitrievich,
00:40:28I completely agree with you, why be cautious with the word bullying,
00:40:32classic
00:40:32genocide.
00:40:39from 5 to 10 billion euros, such
00:40:42astronomical, colossal for the budgets of the Baltic countries,
00:40:46sums Russophobia can cost, according to experts, while
00:40:49the bill to Tallinn and Riga could be presented by the
00:40:53International Court of Justice already next year. It is there that Russia intends
00:40:57to defend the rights of the Russian-speaking population in the Baltics. The process
00:41:01has already been launched, all procedures should be completed by spring
00:41:04of twenty-seven. At that time, as expected, the court
00:41:08will issue a verdict, or rather, should issue one. Well, even if
00:41:11the Baltic authorities refuse to pay, the very fact
00:41:14of Russophobia, discrimination, as
00:41:17we have already indicated today, genocide will be legally
00:41:20enshrined at the UN level, and this is already
00:41:23a global precedent, our correspondent states.
00:41:28The Russians of the Baltics were an argument in someone else's political game for too
00:41:31long. In May, Moscow announced its intention to file a lawsuit with the International Court
00:41:35of Justice against Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia for systematic infringement of the rights
00:41:39of the Russian-speaking population. For Russia, the issue is no longer limited to merely stating
00:41:42violations and concerns in diplomatic notes. It is about
00:41:46the security of its own citizens and compatriots, about preserving the Russian
00:41:49world as a civilized space. There are more than enough
00:41:53arguments for the court: dismantling of monuments, renaming of historical streets,
00:41:56criminal cases against Russian-speaking human rights activists, journalists,
00:41:59politicians, teachers, priests, mass dismissals, and ultimately,
00:42:03forced expulsions. A striking example was the deportation to
00:42:06Russia of a seventy-four-year-old Latvian pensioner, Grigory.
00:42:40The actions of the Baltic authorities are simple and cynical. Russians must either be squeezed out,
00:42:43or broken, or turned into silent statistical noise. In
00:42:46Latvia in the nineties, this experiment began legally elegantly. About
00:42:50750,000 people, almost a third of the population, overnight
00:42:54found themselves in the status of non-citizens. Formally, they were not forbidden to live, work, pay
00:42:57taxes. In fact, they were erased from the political body of the country. The Baltics
00:43:01in this sense are a laboratory of the future. Everything that has been worked out here on the Russian
00:43:05question will then be transferred to another territory where the West needs to break
00:43:09historical memory. Ukraine has long been on this path, and Moldova is
00:43:13also on the rails. And these are the fruits. A meat product manufacturer in Estonia refuses to remove
00:43:16an advertisement that caused a storm of indignation. Two men with Ukrainian
00:43:20flags on their sleeves at a barbecue, behind them smoke from fires with the inscription:
00:43:23"Proper grilling changes the bitter taste of onions to a sweeter one." This is how they joke,
00:43:27using slang that is forbidden in any decent society, but in
00:43:31indecent ones, Russian-speakers are called "onions." There are a huge
00:43:34number of angry comments online, accusations of inciting interethnic
00:43:37hatred, MEP Yana lashed out. "What's that in your
00:43:41background, dear sausage makers? Is the idea that everyone who buys your
00:43:45sausage thinks they're eating a burnt enemy?" But behind
00:43:48this process is a chain of politicians and special services, who perfectly understand what
00:43:52they are doing. The former Prime Minister of Estonia, Kaja Kallas, who became the EU's top diplomat, is only
00:43:56the visible tip of the iceberg. Underneath it is a familiar set of institutions of soft
00:43:59power: foundations, grant programs, independent media, human rights
00:44:03NGOs. Through them, an elite was nurtured for whom the struggle against Russian influence became not
00:44:07an idea, but a profession.
00:44:09It's even curious how the International Court of Justice
00:44:13will behave, Mikhail Petrovich.
00:44:16Is the decision important here, or the precedent itself, in your
00:44:20opinion? I think the precedent is important. Doesn't the situation
00:44:24today in the Baltics remind you of the situation in Ukraine? Even 10 years
00:44:27ago, it was roughly the same thing. Russia was forced
00:44:30to intervene in the rights of its citizens, the protection of the rights of its
00:44:34citizens. This appeal to the International Court will already
00:44:37be a fact and a precedent.
00:44:40Whether you recognized it or not, whether you understood it or not, but we
00:44:43reacted according to international norms. If the international
00:44:46community did not react, Russia will still be forced
00:44:50to protect the rights of its citizens by other
00:44:53means and ways. Well, we probably won't discuss
00:44:57what those are today. I think the leadership of Russia knows best how
00:45:01to protect its citizens. Alexey
00:45:03Viktorovich, if the International Court
00:45:06of Justice makes a decision that Riga,
00:45:10Tallinn must pay the bills, I'm somewhat far from thinking that
00:45:13they will rush to open their fat
00:45:16wallets. Absolutely not, but look, after
00:45:19ninety, when the Baltics gained their independence
00:45:23in general after the collapse of the Soviet Union, more than 20 million people were left outside
00:45:27their native, let's say, land. My
00:45:30parents gave the first generation – that's me, we've given the second generation, and today these
00:45:34millions have grown, doubled or tripled, and today these are
00:45:37absolutely legal hostages of...
00:47:22the situation has exhausted itself, and how the Russian side
00:47:25will further resolve the Russian question
00:47:28in the Baltics, well, as they say, think for yourselves, what
00:47:32tools remain, because that's why this is a very
00:47:35serious story, and the Balts got scared, the Latvians
00:47:38got scared, the Latvian intelligence service, the Bureau for the Protection
00:47:42of the Constitution, has already released huge
00:47:45reports, releases, they called it in English,
00:47:49law fair, law as...
00:49:22everything is fine, yes, that is, today we have beyond the borders of the Republic of Belarus, where
00:49:26there is absolute stability, absolute transparency, concepts, yes, that is,
00:49:29the rule of law exists, there is a wild, insane world,
00:49:33gentlemen, in which there are three categories of people:
00:49:36a citizen, a non-citizen, hello, and
00:49:39a non-citizen, yes, that is, a person who is forbidden to work in 40 professions,
00:49:43a person who is forbidden to vote, a person who only works and pays
00:49:46taxes, you understand, it's hard to say how long our people on
00:49:50the other side will last, while in the big corridors of the courts, someone will
00:49:54walk around and try to achieve something, it's difficult, this is the part of the world that
00:49:57publicly positions itself as democratic
00:50:01Europe. I would still like
00:50:04to continue the thesis about the international court, what
00:50:08you were talking about, but I think that
00:50:11this is also a very important story about
00:50:15human and historical justice,
00:50:18yes, it is unlikely that anyone will pay the bills, but this very
00:50:22public precedent will be created, and I
00:50:25think Mikhail Petrovich, this correlates quite clearly
00:50:29with the story familiar to you and me here in
00:50:32Belarus, the criminal case of the genocide of the Belarusian
00:50:35people, within which, by the way, we are
00:50:39closely cooperating with Russia, and yes, those
00:50:42war criminals, well, due to time, due to the fact that they
00:50:45have already left this world, they did not receive physical
00:50:49punishment, but forever...
00:51:22them in cages like monkeys and showed prove and had to prove with facts, we also need to understand
00:51:25who we are dealing with today, the so-called
00:51:28Expo-58, it was in Brussels in 1958 that
00:51:32they closed an international exhibition, at which there was a human zoo,
00:51:36in fifty- eight, Europeans in
00:51:39Brussels gathered people, put
00:51:42them to others, look, his ear is a different color, you think about
00:51:46who we are working with today, they will not come to their senses, this is an absolute
00:52:33the
00:53:06situation, the time of vampires, remember, as one very famous person said, is coming
00:53:10to an end, but they are still trying to paint over this end, to postpone
00:53:13it somehow, but it's inevitable, today it's clear that this empire
00:53:17will collapse, it's a matter of time, well,
00:53:20the question is, when will all this, continuing your
00:53:23metaphor, be washed away by the rain, Andrey
00:53:26Dmitrievich? I think we will all see this
00:53:29in our
00:53:37considering the wishes of our Minister of Culture,
00:53:41our film will be seen, believe me, our people watch, they find it,
00:53:44the internet is a great thing, they find everything.
00:54:03We are, perhaps, the only country in the world to have survived a color revolution, an attempted
00:54:06coup, and a series of articulated hybrid attacks.
00:54:10We did not get involved in a war, although different centers of power are pulling us
00:54:13there. They call this Minsk's multi-vector policy,
00:54:16Lukashenka's versatility, but the result is a peaceful, clear
00:54:20sky, a well-groomed country, and a state of social