Latvia rebuts Russia’s criticism over ‘Non-Citizens’

The Latvian Foreign Ministry has refuted remarks by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who accused the Baltic states of discrimination against their Russian-speaking population. Lavrov called on Wednesday the "non-citizens" category that still exists in Latvia, Estonia and Lithuania, which are members of the European Union, "a disgrace to today's Europe." “We cannot agree with Mr. Lavrov’s remarks,” parliamentary secretary of the Latvian Foreign Ministry Viktor Makarov said in an interview with Baltkom radio. “Latvia has met all [EU] criteria relating to observance of human rights and the protection of the rights of ethnic and language minorities.” Makarov said Lavrov’s statements could be considered as an attempt to interfere in Latvia’s internal affairs. “We noticed that the number of such statements [as Lavrov’s] from the Russian side has increased recently, but we hope that rationality in Latvian-Russian relations will prevail and we will not continue to criticize each other simply to achieve internal political gains,” Makarov said. Ethnic Russians make up about 44 percent of Latvia's 2.1 million population. At least 319,000 Russian speakers remain without citizenship and have no right to vote. Latvia maintains that it was illegally incorporated into the USSR in 1940 and then occupied by the Soviets until 1991, during which time hundreds of thousands of Russians immigrated into the republic.