Moscow warns Latvia over dropping Russian in schools
RUSSIA’S parliament has threatened sanctions in response to a reform in Latvia that will mean schoolchildren are taught in Latvian rather than Russian.
It raises further tensions with Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia, members of the European Union and Nato, each of which has been wary of Vladimir Putin’s promises to “defend the rights” of Russian speakers in other countries.
Yesterday, the leaders of the three countries told Donald Trump, the United States president, of Russia’s increasingly aggressive foreign policy at a meeting in the White House. Although Latvian is the official language in that former Soviet republic, a quarter of the population is ethnic Russian and 100 state-funded schools offer Russian or bilingual teaching.
A language reform approved on Monday by Raimonds Vējonis, Latvia’s president, however, will phase in Latvian-language instruction for all grade 10-12 students by 2021, with the exception of some Russian language and literature courses. Mr Vējonis said this would “form a more cohesive society and a stronger state”.
Early education will remain bilingual, with half of all courses taught in Russian for elementary pupils and 20 per cent for those in grades 7-9. Moscow reacted angrily to the reform. Sergei Zheleznyak, a Russian MP, called it “language genocide” and compared it to the “open Nazism toward the Russian population” that he claimed was occurring in Ukraine.
In a statement on Tuesday, Russia’s Duma condemned the “discriminatory” language reform as “forced assimilation” that infringed on the rights of national minorities and threatened sanctions that could affect financial operations and trade agreements. It came after Latvia expelled a Russian diplomat in solidarity with Britain over the poisoning of Sergei Skripal in Salisbury.