RUSSIAN NEO-NAZIS IN LATVIA.

Latvia’s Internal Affairs Ministry and Office for the Protection of the Constitution (OPC) are concerned by the sudden emergence in Latvia of Russian National Unity (RNE), a local offshoot of Aleksandr Barkashov’s neo-Nazi organization in Russia. In statements made on February 16 and 17, respectively, Latvia’s Internal Affairs Minister Roberts Jurdzs and OPC Director Lainis Kamaldins described RNE as unlawful and warned that it will be closely monitored. The officials praised the police in the city of Liepaja for stopping an unauthorized RNE demonstration and arresting some forty of the participants, who had gathered at a Soviet military memorial. About half of those arrested now face court proceedings.

RNE members are far younger than other Russian nationalist or Red groups in the Baltic states. Before emerging in Liepaja, the group recently distributed printed propaganda in Riga and claimed to have branches in several other cities of Latvia (see the Monitor, February 9). In a February 16 statement, one of the leaders, Yevgeny Osipov, listed RNE’s main enemies as Latvian “ultra-rightists” and Zionists, and its main goal as restoring a Greater Russian nation-state (BNS, February 16, 17).

RUSSIA’S FEDERATION COUNCIL CONDITIONALLY RATIFIES TREATY WITH UKRAINE.