Foreign Ministry asks authorities to check whether there are Kremlin sympathizers among foreign business executives

RIGA - The Foreign Ministry has called on line ministries and state institutions to come up with proposals for further strengthening of EU sanctions against Russia, LETA was told at the ministry.

The Foreign Ministry calls for an assessment of whether the management structures of major Latvian enterprises and organizations include any Russian, Belarusian or other third-country nationals who directly or indirectly support Russian aggression in Ukraine and who may be linked to Russian state institutions. If such persons and their links to Russian aggression are identified, the Foreign Ministry will propose that they be targeted with the European Union's restrictive measures.

Foreign Minister Krisjanis Karins (New Unity) notes that since February 24, 2022, when Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Latvian authorities have been constantly working to detect and prevent cases where Russian or other countries' nationals with links to the Putin regime and its aggression in Ukraine are operating in Latvia.

"This is an ongoing effort and in order to accomplish that, we have approached the line ministries with a request to assess whether third-country citizens who support the Putin regime and its aggression against Ukraine are holding high-ranking positions in important Latvian companies," Karins said.

As the Foreign Ministry's spokeswoman Diana Eglite told LETA, this is a preventive measure the responsible authorities are taking to assess foreign nationals in their respective areas of supervision. Some cases requiring such an assessment have already been brought to the Foreign Ministry's attention, she said.