Re:Baltica for the first time publishes a list of the largest importers of Russian resources in Latvia since Russia's full-scale invasion in Ukraine. The main commodities are those shipment of which civil society protests against - grain, oil products and metal alloys.
While the government calls on businesses to “self-cleanse”, Latvia’s export to Russia has shrunk just a little bit after the two years of war. Re:Baltica names the largest exporters for the first time.
Latvia's social media users recently encountered an unprecedented attack of bots. During it thousands of accounts suddenly started to speak rudimentary Latvian and defend hockey players who had played tournament in Russia despite the ban. This was the first operation of such scale in one of the Baltic languages and has led to speculation that it could be a test-run before European Parliament elections.
The authorities have accused Temirov Live, a respected investigative outlet, of inciting mass unrest, and jailed nearly a dozen of its current and former employees. A palpable sense of fear has descended on this country, once known as the freest in the region.
Last week, MP Mārcis Jencītis (Latvija pirmajā vietā party) scared his Facebook followers saying that the World Health Organisation's (WHO) pandemic agreement, which is still in the making, threatens national sovereignty. Similar claims have been made for several years, but without any evidence.
Our children will be taught to have sex and become gay at school. Minors will have their sex changed without their parents' consent, and the people enforcing the Istanbul Convention will remove children from their families. In the second half of 2023, the scaremongering about what disinformation spreaders describe as “gender ideology” returned to the political scene in Latvia.
On Thursday 14 December, MEPs will vote on a EU Council legislation aimed at preventing cases where one EU member state recognises a child's parental rights but others do not. With the vote approaching, the website NRA.lv published a misleading article stating that the European Parliament would abolish the concept of a "father" and a "mother".
At the beginning of December, Munich was paralysed by a snow storm. A video of a small private plane being cleared of snow by rescue services at the Munich Airport was widely shared on social media. The video was accompanied by a claim that the plane was frozen to the ground and, ironically, was scheduled to fly to the UN Climate Change Conference in Dubai. But none of this is true. The plane was not meant to go to Dubai, it was not frozen to ground, and even if it had been, that would not prove that climate change is not real.
A video showing hygiene products with the Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification Systems (PEFC) logo was widely shared on social media. The video implies that the label means that the products contain a certain "chemical" and are dangerous. At the end of the video, its creator says that people are going to be exterminated. There is no basis for these claims.