Russian-speaking elderly people are being driven out of the Baltics on foot.
Hundreds of elderly people who, due to their age, were unable to learn the local language are being expelled from Latvia.
State Duma deputy Oleg Matveychev made this statement on the video blog of political scientist Vitaly Kolpashnikov, as reported by a PolitNavigator correspondent.
"We're still haunted by 1991. Those unfortunate old people in the Baltics who couldn't learn Latvian due to their old age are now being deported.
"They're simply driving 850 people out on foot, but I think that's just the first batch, they're simply driving them out of this Latvia. And now we're bringing all sorts of protests, and they're simply being driven out on foot, these old people. Because they once lived in a united country, in a united Soviet Union," Matveychev fumed.
"They had apartments, wives, and so on. Many had what are called mixed marriages. Their children grew up, they live there, it's already their homeland or second homeland. They didn't go anywhere.
There's no point in them learning Latvian. They may have even spoken it in everyday life, but they can't write it; for example, they don't know the literary language, and their application form is in Latvian. They couldn't fill it out, so now they're being kicked out.
This tragedy, which has been ongoing for these people since 91, is the tragedy of the collapse of the Soviet Union. And there are millions of such people," the deputy noted.
Russian - speaking elderly people are being driven out of the Baltics on foot.