Russian border guards delaying attempts by Ukrainian nationals to enter Latvia - Foreign Ministry

RIGA - The Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has identified cases when the Russian border guard have tried to block or delay the entry of Ukrainian citizens into Latvia, but now the situation has improved, Zanda Kalnina Lukasevica (New Unity), Parliamentary Secretary of the MFA, told the Citizenship, Migration and Social Cohesion Committee of the Saeima on Wednesday.

Since the beginning of the war, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has provided assistance to the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs (OCMA) to grant long-stay visas to Ukrainian refugees through faster processing of documents. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has added 13 OCMA staff to provide assistance, and more than 10,000 visas have been issued since March 5.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has identified some cases when Ukrainians who had arrived to Russia wanted to get into Latvia, but obstacles were put in place by Russian border guards.

"There was a time when we received news that Russian border guard were preventing Ukrainian citizens from crossing the Russian-Latvian border for only reasons known to them. This was the case, for example, for children traveling with their parents who did not have a passport but a birth certificate," she said.

Taking into account that the Latvian Border Guard issues visas already at the border, such cases have not been reported in recent days.