Issue #639 (6), Friday, January 26, 2001

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Vandals Targeting Latvian Consulate

By Vladimir Kovalyev

Staff Writer

In what has become a cycle of hostility, the Latvian Consulate in St. Petersburg was vandalized early Tuesday morning by a group that smashed windows on the building's first floor, thus touching off a minor diplomatic furor.

Glass on the front door and two windows on the first floor of the building - which is located on the 10th Line of St. Petersburg's Vasilievsky Island - were shattered with a metal rod and stones, consulate officials said. Latvian Embassy officials accused the Russian authorities of being lax for not posting 24-hour guards in front of the diplomatic mission.

"The Russians are not providing safety for the consulate, which they should be doing according to the Vienna Convention [signed in 1963]," said Latvian Consul General Yuris Audarins in an interview on Thursday.

The police and consulate officials say they think members of the nationalist Russian National Unity Party, or RNE, group - which has no connection to the Yedinstvo, or Unity, political faction - were involved in the violence. In fact, a police source who requested anonymity said that they had a suspect for the most recent attack under surveillance but had not arrested him yet. The source declined to say why, but he did say that the suspect had been kicked out of RNE.

Throughout the year, said Audarins, the consulate has suffered at least six hostile acts, including angry pickets, telephone threats, and even a Molotov cocktail attack last July.

And last January, the consulate was vandalized with black paint and eggs. During the same month, the RNE claimed responsibility for the action. The police arrested a young activist, Andrei Dmitriyev, who was charged with deliberate damage of property. He confessed, spent three days in jail, but then he was amnestied and released.

Also last May, police said, RNE members paid a beggar 250 rubles and two bottles of highly alcoholic cleaning fluid for the beggar to drink in exchange for his breaking the consulate's windows. He too was arrested and let go shortly thereafter.

After Tuesday's attack, the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a letter of protest to the Russian Embassy in Riga, demanding Russia organize 24-hour security for the St. Petersburg consulate as well as apprehending the vandals, Audarins said. The note added that Russia's Embassy in Riga has round-the-clock protection from Latvian police.

Police at Vasilieostrovsky Police station No. 16, however, say that they don't have the staff to provide that kind of service. Generally, police can cover the consulate only on the days when its visa section is working, the source said.

He said the Lithuanian, Czech and Estonian consulates are in the same situation.

Unconsoled, Audarins said there appears to be a method behind the violence, which appears to be driven by the tensions that have existed between Russia and the newly independent Baltic state.

Dmitriyev, who was arrested last year, said he was protesting the imprisonment in Latvia of Vasily Kononov, 77, a former Soviet officer accused of war crimes and sentenced to six years last January.

RNE members were not available for comment on the incident, but members of the Russian Party, another local nationalist group in St. Petersburg with anti-Baltic leanings, said it supported the alleged actions of the RNE.

"The Baltic states made the policy of apartheid legal," said Russian Party leader Nikolai Bondarik, in reference to the citizenship difficulties that Russians have had in the Baltic states since the disintegration of the Soviet Union.

Latvia fell under Soviet rule as a result of the Molotov-Ribentropp pact signed in 1939. Approximately 35 percent of Latvia's native population was killed during World War II, deported to Siberia, or fled.

Since Latvia regained independence in 1991, Russia has been concerned about the Baltic nation's ethnic Russian population and the Kremlin has protested the republic's policy of prosecuting suspected former Soviet officers.