Zrada: Dozhd’ Closes in Latvia

From |FT:

Please use the sharing tools found via the share button at the top or side of articles. Copying articles to share with others is a breach of FT.com T&Cs and Copyright Policy. Email licensing@ft.com to buy additional rights. Subscribers may share up to 10 or 20 articles per month using the gift article service. More information can be found here.
https://www.ft.com/content/c6617435-aaef-47da-aaea-d6d868f10ed8

The trigger to ban TV Rain came last week when Alexei Korostelyov, a news anchor, asked Russians drafted into the army and their relatives to send information about their often dire living conditions. The grim news from the front has been an important topic for independent outlets like TV Rain, which have reported on men being press-ganged into fighting, forced to buy basic equipment and slaughtered en masse in artillery strikes.

But Korostelyov provoked an outcry by saying TV Rain hoped “we have been able to help many servicemen with things like equipment and basic comforts” — a sign taken in Latvia that even exiled Russians supported the war effort.

Dzyadko said Korostelyov’s comments “do not reflect the position of the channel,” which he said TV Rain had proved by firing him.

Though the channel quickly apologised and fired Korostelyov, the incident capped tensions that had been evident since the channel started broadcasting in Latvia. TV Rain was under investigation for two incidents apparently demonstrating its support for Russia — calling Russia’s armed forces “our army” and showing a map of Russia with the Crimean peninsula, which Putin annexed from Ukraine in 2014.

I was laughing my tits off when reading the above.

Zrada

Latvian Caricature: The Repurposed Port

I do not know Latvian but I never realised how close the Baltic languages are lexically to ours. So here is my free translation:

The Carousel
One Ride
Cost 5 euro

Source

For another post on the topic of bypassing the wretched little countries of Eastern Europe that are ill with Russophobia, please read here.

Fire Sale on the Latvian Railway

One of the tropes on this blog always was that Russophobia leads to poverty, destitution, and decay. And this goes not just for utter shitholes of the East like Ukraine or Moldova, this concerns all the post-communists countries where Russophobic sentiments fueled by local Western funded activists and encouraged by the US government (I do not think historical memory of Soviet domination is the major factor behind these sentiments) posing as politicians and journalists lead to the destruction of infrastructure, decay of economy, and missed opportunities…

One of the policies of Russia in recent years was to redirect its infrastructure to bypass the formerly communist nations of Eastern Europe and instead deal with more confident nations like Germany or Turkey. This is how Bulgarians missed out on the Black Sea pipeline, and in the works is the Czech Republic missing on the opportunity to expand its nuclear power plants if it listens to the voices that urge the government to boycott the Rosatom bid.

And for a good example of missed opportunity and subsequent industrial decay, we should look to Latvia. Latvia has sinned against the Russian people, it has discriminated against them, it has made them second class citizens. Latvia has also been guilty of shamelessly glorifying Nazi collaborators. Meanwhile, Latvia was a large transport corridor for Russian coal and other resources that used the ports on the Baltic Sea. Latvia also joined NATO, another unfriendly act, and Russia quietly built her own port on the Baltic Sea and stopped the shipments through Latvia.

The RuBaltic reports that the Latvian Railways plan to sell 4,300 tons of scrap metal from rails, pointers and other pieces of infrastructure. In May last year, the Latvian railways sold their real estate in Jelgava, the building in question was used as a recreation home for the employees of the railways. The logic is simple, no employees, no recreation home. In June the Latvian Railways put up for sale 46 cars. In July, the Railways put up for sale the station in Suntaži. In August, the Latvian Railways put up for sale 200 transport wagons. In September they put up for sale 3,500 tons of scrap metals. In November it was 8 locomotives. Further more automibiles have been put up for sale in December…