There is a risk of growing ethnic tension in Latvia, which is currently latent but can be potentially increased by locals’ overall unhappiness with the situation and aggression, as concluded in the Latvian National Security Concept (NDK).
Latvia’s government approved the concept submitted by the Ministry of the Interior on Tuesday, the 19th of September. The document was initially classified but has since been made public. This document mentions that the Russian-Ukrainian war has a strong foothold in Latvian residents’ minds, revealing the system of beliefs, ideological convictions and differences in historic memory of a certain groups of residents. These differences take the shape of the sympathy of some minority groups of Latvian society towards the Kremlin, public support for Russian aggression in Ukraine and openness to Russian influence.
The Russian war in Ukraine caused not only a sense of insecurity and condemnation in most of society, but also a demand for a faster abandonment of the Soviet heritage, which eventually resulted in the dismantling of Soviet-era monuments by the government and many municipalities in 2022, the concept mentions.
At the same time, these activities, as well as Latvia’s support provided to Ukraine, caused a wave of aggression among Kremlin-supporting residents. This aggression and hate is mainly limited to comments on various social networks and video-sharing platforms.
Sometimes this aggression takes the shape of actual incidents,
including ones aimed against Ukrainian refugees.
Because there are possibilities for rising ethnic tension, state security institutions together with law enforcement institutions have to maintain constant situation monitoring to prevent tension escalations within society and identify potentially dangerous external signals in advance, the concept mentions.
Law enforcement institutions also have to maintain a zero tolerance principle for any kind of support for Russian aggression that appears in the public information space.
Domestic security is also affected by the worsening demographic situation, high poverty level and income inequality and education quality.
Depopulation that is unavoidable in the foreseeable future,
as well as the rapid ageing of the population will create more pressure on the state administration, weakening its ability to ensure the qualitative performance of the functions of society throughout the territory of the country. This will maintain high levels of dissatisfaction with state administration’s insufficient capacity and quality of work, maintaining residents’ weak trust in the government.
The narrowing of labour force resources and growing competition for workers will affect all state administration sectors. In the context of national security, the challenges of recruiting personnel in the defence, internal security and justice sectors will increase. These factors will also create growing challenges in ensuring appropriate protection of critical infrastructure.
Development of the interior and justice sectors’ infrastructure may be delayed because of the growing construction and building maintenance costs. The aforementioned risks will contribute to new domestic and external security challenges.
The main domestic security risks are mainly associated growing crime rates, grey economy, smuggling activities, alcohol and narcotics consumption, as well as
disregard of security rules and requirements at household level
and business activities, the document mentions.
For the purpose of strengthening internal security and a cohesive society, it is necessary to promote the consolidation of the majority of society around common values based on the independence of the state, its belonging to the Western world, the Latvian language as the only state language and such an understanding of history that condemns the crimes committed by totalitarian regimes against humanity and the repetition of similar historical events today, the concept states.
State institutions have to continue efforts to reduce the presence of heritage of foreign regimes in Latvia’s cultural space. Equally important is the long-term work on presenting the Latvian state, its history and personalities, creating monuments and memorial sites in the urban environment and developing museum expositions. Efforts here have to be aimed at creating a sense of belonging to the Latvian state, as well as reinforcement of a common understanding of history in society.
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