In this city located near the Russian and Belarusian borders, the war in Ukraine tears families, the population dividing between Russians or Russian-speakers and Latvians. To who have to turn?
by
In the heart of Daugavpils, in the south-east of Latvia, the place of the unit seems exaggerated great. As built for an event of a glorious distant past in a city that has lost its blister. In 1944, when the Soviet army has “liberated” – the Latvians have trouble accepting this word that preigrated fifty years of occupation and deportation – the city, they shaved the ruins of the old district of houses and Stores populated mainly by Jews before their extermination. And created this huge place by raising in its center an imposing statue of Lenin, dismantled in 1991, when the Baltic country found its independence.
Sometimes rare pedestrians cross it, crows fly over, with a discreet mirror effect. Everything seems so calm today in this city of 80,000 inhabitants, only 30 kilometers from the Belarusian border and 150 kilometers from the Russian border. Latvia, its neighbor in Northern Estonia and its neighbor in South Lithuania became members of the European Union and NATO in 2004. But will it suffice to prevent Putin’s appetite, which considers Also the Baltic countries as part of the great Russian Empire castrated?
Daugavpils is in the first line, crossing and trapped by its multiple identities. Since the 24th of February and the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, the pedestrians go to the same tranquil on this place cleared from the statue of Lenin. But in their head, many are broinped, poor. Nearly half of the inhabitants being Russian or Russian-speaking (20% barely are Latvians), to whom should they turn? Are we going to threaten them?
“It’s not just”
The boss of the Bar Concert Artileris Pagrabi, which overlooks the square, knows it. In 2014, just after the annexation of Crimea by Russia, Andrejs Faibusevics had just opened his pub, with the idea that the servers had to speak only Latvian, even if the customers could speak Russian. “The Russophones,” he said to the world, must understand that Latvian speak do not deprive them of their ethnicity. “He proudly proud of the atmosphere that reigned in the pub. “Everyone is served, it goes against what Russophones tells the Russian propaganda who wash them the brain saying that Latvians are all fascists.”
At the beginning of March, it looks dark. After fifty-five years of marriage, his father, the 82-year-old Russian citizen, and his mother, 81-year-old Latvian citizen, have just separated, on February 24, on the first day of the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine. Because of her. “He lives in a different informative bubble, completely turned to Russia, speaking little.” The Father, who touches a Russian retreat, moved to his sister edite, who takes on her to tell the last days of face-to- face. “It does not read the Latvian. It depends to learn about Russian TV. I was shocked to see that it came out that story of Ukraine Nazie. I told him,” Dad, so Putin did not Not enough of the Ukrainian blood, he will come here, in the Baltic countries. You welcome it with open arms? “” His father evaded by saying that Putin would not come in Latvia.
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