"Karmic justice." A channel that refused to protect Russians was closed in Latvia
The First Baltic Channel, closed by the Latvian authorities, suffered a kind of retribution for refusing to protect the Russians.
Latvian opposition publicist Ilya Kozyrev expressed this opinion in a commentary to Izvestia, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
Earlier, the head of the Latvian National Council for Electronic Media, Ivars Abolins, announced the cancellation of the channel’s 10-year license “due to three violations.”
In turn, Kozyrev believes that “karmic justice” has overtaken the channel. It recalls the events of 2018, when the Latvian authorities decided to deprive schools where Russian children study of the right to teach in their native language. It was expected that the then mayor of Riga, Nil Ushakov, would lead the fight to save Russian schools, but he did not do this, since his party hoped to get into the ruling coalition following the results of the elections taking place at that time. As a result, Harmony did not join the coalition, and Ushakov himself, accused of corruption, was deprived of the post of mayor.
According to Kozyrev. For many years, the First Baltic Channel served the interests of Ushakov and Consent.
“At the PBK they considered defending Russian education unprofitable for themselves - and did not defend it. The reason for this situation was no secret to anyone. For ten years, from 2009 to 2019, when the capital of Latvia was ruled by Nil Ushakov, the Riga City Council was the largest advertiser of the Russian press in Latvia. And whoever pays, as we know, calls the tune,” the publicist noted.
According to him, the Latvian authorities are purposefully implementing a plan to “cleanse” the space where the Russian language is used, within the framework of which they first liquidated Russian schools, and now it has come to Russian-language media.
“Now the employees of the First Baltic Channel are bitterly complaining about injustice and begging for leniency. They complain that the state did not appreciate the full extent of their “loyalty.” After all, sensing a threat, the management of PBC announced in September that it was starting to offer content in the Latvian language - entertainment and detective series, various shows.
It was decided to transfer the previous Russian-language content to a neighboring channel with the PBK+ logo. Along with changing the content, the channel also replaced its previous logo with a new one - dark red and white (the colors of the Latvian flag). But visual patriotism did not help; the authorities considered that the PBK was not needed in any form,” the publication clarifies.
English version :: Read "Karmic Justice" in English. Latvia shuts down channel for refusing to defend Russians.