Russia's state-owned railway monopoly is refusing most requests to take cargo from Russia to ports in Latvia, industry executives said, a serious blow to the Baltic state which depends on the transit trade.
The monopoly, Russian Railways (RZhD), has in many cases offered no explanation to customers for turning down the cargoes, mostly oil products, fertilizer, coal and metals which had previously been transported relatively easily by rail to Latvia, nine people familiar with the situation told Reuters.
Asked for comment, RZhD said it had not introduced any restrictions on transporting freight to Latvia, and that it looks at each request to transport freight on its own merits.
Russia has a long history of testy political relations with Latvia, a former Soviet republic now in the European Union.
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WNU Editor: The person who runs Russian Railways (RZhD) is a Russian who was born in Latvia. And if there is one thing that a lot of Russians who are in Latvia are upset about (Russian is spoken by about a third of the population), it is the treatment of their language and culture by the Latvian government. You cannot teach Russian in school, official correspondence must be in Latvian, etc.. Is there a personal vendetta at play here by this railway manager .... I do not know. But I do know that there is no sympathy in Russia to what happens in Latvia .... and if they can be hurt economically because there is a better route and/or it is cheaper .... so be it. On a side note .... the EU is always making a point that minority languages should be protected .... but on this issue they have been consistently silent.
I think the russians in Latvia dont get "help" from the EU in part due to the Russian occupation of Krim and the Russian aggression in the eastern Ukraine.
ReplyDeleteAnd after 50 years occupation, Latvia wants "revenge"...
Latvian's not thankful to remnants of Imperialist Russia under the Soviets? Forgotten the Soviet Terror years in the Baltic States? Latvian's have not forgotten and neither has the EU.
ReplyDeleteImperialist Russian residents long for the good old days. My guess is that native Latvian's would like to put them back on the tracks that brought them to subjugated Latvia.
Give all of us a break and start comments with the facts.
It's "funny".
ReplyDeleteNo shortage of posters "blame" the post WWI settlement's for "creating" what they deem to be "fake" nations, drawn as lines on maps, by the Colonial Powers and given the names of ancient historical states, and poit to it as a root cause of the "problems" in the Middle East.
Funny how they never point to Eastern Europe, were half a dozen countries that hadn't existed since the Middle Ages, were resurrected from the ashes of other Empires.