Foreign Minister Kariņš resigns as criminal probe opens on charter flight use as PM

Government pushes for EU manganese ore transit ban among rising public outrage

The most recent big news was the resignation March 28 of Latvian Foreign Minister Krišjānis Kariņš after meeting with Prime Minister Evika Siliņa.

The resignation of the American-born Latvian politician came in the wake of Latvia’s Prosecutor General  on March 22 asking the nation’s anti-corruption agency to launch a criminal investigation of Kariņš use of private charter flights on official business when he was Prime Minister from 2019-2023.

At the meeting with the Prime Minister, Kariņš was likely told that he could become a liability to the government coalition and to the image of Latvia as a western-style democracy where politicians tend to take responsibility even when there is a suspicion of impropriety.

Kariņš will leave his post on April 10 to allow time for a replacement to be found and confirmed at a regular session of the parliament or Saeima on April 11.

Foreign Minister Krišjānis Kariņš announces his resignation as his use of charter flights while Prime Minister is investigated. Photo: LSM.lv

The controversy over the use of chartered private jets by Kariņš and some of his staff broke last fall when a local news site reported that he as Prime Minister had spent over EUR 600 000 of state funds on some 15 charter flights instead of using commercial airlines.

Commentators on media and on social networks said the use of taxpayer money for flying the head of the government and his staff on private charter flights was exorbitant. Karinš, in statements through his current office, said that the charter flights, while possibly more expensive than commercial travel, were necessary to save time for the prime minister and staff members or to return quickly to state business in Latvia if an international conference took longer than planned.

The Prosecutor General’s statement noted that the Latvian State Chancellery, which is formally responsible for travel by high government officials, could bear the main responsibility for misuse of state funds and did not suggest Kariņš was personally responsible for wasting taxpayer money. The State Chancellery failed to follow best practices and to at least organize some kind of competitive bid for charter air transport services.

However, the continuing media and public discussion of the former Prime Minister’s travels was seen as casting a shadow on the Siliņa’s center-left government as a whole and she was urged by her New Unity (JV) party of which Kariņš is also a member to discuss the issue with the Foreign Minister, which she did.

Kariņš, 59, was born in Wilmington, Delaware to Latvian refugee parents and holds a PhD in linguistics from the University of Pennsylvania. He moved to Latvia in the mid-1990s, and entered politics as a founder of the New Era party in 2002, a predecessor of the current centrist-liberal JV.

Compromise  resolution asking EU to sanctions manganese ore seen as insufficient

On March 26 in a pre-Easter session, the Saeima supported a draft resolution on measures to terminate the country's economic relations with the aggressor countries - Russia and Belarus. The resolution calls on the European Union (EU) to immediately adopt the 14th round of sanctions against Russia and to include manganese ore in the list of sanctioned goods to prevent it from reaching Russia and being used in the military industry.

The Saeima resolution was a compromise that opposition lawmakers said watered down their original draft that would have called for an immediate end to all transit of manganese ore through Latvia and for an eventual break of all economic and trade relations with Russia and Belarus.

In the resolution, lawmakers also called on the governments of Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Poland and Finland to declare manganese ore a dual-use good and adopt a mutually coordinated decision on banning the transit of dual-use goods and preventing the goods from reaching military end user or being incorporated into military goods or being used in their production.

The Saeima resolution, backed only by government coalition deputies as against a harsher draft put forth by the opposition centrist United List (AS) and the conservative nationalist National Alliance (NA) is probably not enough to placate either the opposition nor the simmering public anger that the government seems unable to cut off the flow of manganese ore immediately. On social media, comparisons have been made with the JV’s then Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš shutting down all public and much commercial life in a matter of days after the world-wide Covid-19 pandemic was declared.

Poland’s Foreign Minister Sikorski urges seizing all Russian assets to arm, rebuild Ukraine

The European Union (EU) should be ready to go into “unknown” legal territory and use all frozen Russian assets, not just their earnings, to finance military aid to Ukraine and the country’ s post-war reconstruction, Poland’s Foreign Minister Radoslaw Sikorski told journalists in the Latvian capital March 27.

Sikorski said that a UN General Assembly resolution passed soon after Russia’ s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 gives a legal ground for seizing Russian assets to use against the aggressor.

“(Russian President Vladimir) Putin’s regime threatens all of us and we have the right to use the aggressor’ s assets against him,” the Polish Foreign Minister said, speaking to media through an interpreter.

The Latvian government last March 27 announced it was expelling a Russian diplomat to signal “a categorical protest from the Latvian side regarding the unacceptable and provocative public communication carried out by the (Russian) embassy for a long time.”

A statement from the Latvian Foreign Ministry said: “Despite repeated reprimands from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the Russian Embassy has continued its incorrect public communication aimed at discrediting the institutions and institutions of Latvian state power and inciting hatred in Latvian society.”

The unnamed diplomat must leave Latvia by April 10, according to the Foreign Ministry.

Latvia has not had diplomatic relations with Russia at the level of ambassador since shortly after the invasion of Ukraine. The decision to expel or declare an embassy staff member persona non grata was presented to Russia’s temporary charge d’ affairs Oleg Zivkov.

SAAB makes a push for the Latvian Armed Forces

The Swedish aircraft and defense systems company SAAB, formerly an automaker, recently held a media presentation at the Swedish Embassy in Riga where company representatives spoke of SAAB as a provider of ground-based air and anti-tank defense systems and combat simulators for training soldiers and evaluating their performance in exercises

Samuel Karlsson SAAB’s country manager in Latvia spoke of the Carl Gustav shoulder-fired anti-tank and anti-armor weapon, now in its fourth generation after decades of use in the Swedish Armed Forces. Carl Gustavs were donated to Latvia and the other Baltic countries in the mid-to-late 1990s when Sweden decided to donate large amounts of military equipment and training as it downsized its own armed forces. Along with the single-used AT4 anti-armor weapon, the Carl Gustav is already used by the Latvian armed forces

Karlsson also also mentioned the Swedish-designed RBS 70 anti-aircraft missile system, also used by the Latvian military.

One deficiency that SAAB hopes Latvia’s military will remedy is the lack of battlefield simulation systems that can be integrated into NATO’s evaluation of major exercises by tracking the performance starting from individual soldiers with sensors to entire maneuver units.

SAAB executives said the company was open to cooperation with the Latvian defense industry, whicj already builds a version of the Finnish-designed Patria armored personnel carrier.

An interesting historical note – the SAAB presentation mentioned that the company was founded in 1937 in order to build combat aircraft in Sweden for the Swedish military. At around the same time, Latvia’s aircraft designer Kārlis Irbitis (who moved to Canada after the war) and the Latvian State Electro-Technical Factor (VEF) were also designing and building prototypes of monoplane, metal fuselage potential combat aircraft. That made Latvia and Sweden two small nations building their own combat aircraft as the larger aviation powers – Great Britain and Germany, slid toward war.