As Russia continues the war in Ukraine, mass avoidance of a new mobilization and, accordingly, Russian attempts to cross the Latvian border are hardly expected, officials of the Latvian Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of the Interior admitted in an online expert discussion organized by the defense industry portal “Sargs.lv” on Thursday.
As Russia continues the war in Ukraine, mass avoidance of a new mobilization and, accordingly, Russian attempts to cross the Latvian border are hardly expected, officials of the Latvian Ministry of Defense and the Ministry of the Interior admitted in an online expert discussion organized by the defense industry portal “Sargs.lv” on Thursday.
The previous mass mobilization last autumn suggested that the disaffected may come from the middle class, whose representatives are unlikely to be those who “want to crawl across the border”, but instead choose countries for legal emigration, such as Turkey or the United Arab Emirates, the Ministry of Defense said state secretary Jānis Garisons.
“Regarding the rest, we have to clearly admit that if there was dissatisfaction and avoidance, then we would expect some kind of internal unrest or something like that, but I think we will not see it and we will hardly expect such a mass avoidance. I think that the Russian society is has accepted her role,” Garrison emphasized.
Ivars Ruskulis, deputy head of the state border guard, stated in the discussion that after last year’s mobilization, mass attempts of Russian citizens to get to Latvia were not observed. At that time, there were only isolated cases.
He also reminded that the Russian authorities intensively control people in public facilities in the country so that they do not leave and avoid mobilization. Similarly, it is not so easy for Russians to emigrate and they are “put in the role of medieval serfs”.
State Secretary of the Ministry of Internal Affairs Dmitrijs Trofimovs stated in the discussion that there have been several separate cases where Russian citizens have requested asylum in Latvia because they do not want to be mobilized. In one case, it was decided to refuse, and the court also decided that this is not a reason for granting asylum. Taking into account the above, it will now be necessary to observe whether such a court decision will have an impact on future court judgments, so the court’s understanding of these issues is important.
