• Cabinet of Ministers is about to approve granting of Latvian citizenship to 158 naturalised persons

Vesti Segodnya reports that the Cabinet of Ministers is about to approve granting of Latvian citizenship to 158 persons who recently went through the naturalisation process. 70% of applicants for citizenship are ethnic Russians, 11% are Ukrainians, 8% are Belorussians. 21% have elementary education, 53% - secondary, 23% - higher.

• Diena: Russia still raises issues regarding non-citizenship problem in Latvia

Diena reports about a meeting of the Foreign Affairs Ministers of Latvia and Russian Federation Edgars Rinkevics and Sergejs Lavrovs. The newspaper highlight that Russia still raises the issue of non-citizenship in Latvia and sensitive historical issues. However, according to the Latvian Minister these issues were only a small part of the whole conversation. The Minister also told that he had to dispel the myths to Russian journalists about manifestation of Nazism in Latvia.

• Latvijas Avize prints an interview with the Mayor of Riga and the leader of the Concord Centre Nils Usakovs

Latvijas Avize prints an interview with the Mayor of Riga and the leader of the Concord Centre (CC) Nils Usakovs. According to Mr Usakovs, the CC becomes more “ethnic Latvian” as it has new ethnic Latvian members and support of many ethnic Latvian voters. At the same time, Mr Usakovs is against separation of the political parties along ethnic lines – into ethnic Latvian and Russian. Nils Usakovs also says that the CC does not support any ethnic Russian or ethnic Latvian nationalists and believes that nationalists do not work in the interests of the nation but they fight with each other.

• Vesti Segodnya reports about a provocation conducted by the TV journalists towards Russian language schools

Vesti Segodnya reports about a TV broadcast “Prohibited Techniques” in which its journalists, on the threshold of the Independence Day (18 November), called three Russian language schools in Riga pretending to be representatives of the Ministry of Education and asked the directors of the schools to put posters devoted to the Independence Day. Later, the same journalists repeatedly called the schools pretending to be representatives of an organisation “9 May” and asked to remove the posters as those contain information about Soviet occupation. Following such provocation, two schools agreed to remove the posters. Thus, the journalists made a conclusion that despite the fact that Russian language schools conduct events devoted to the Independence of Latvia, managers of the schools are disloyal towards Latvian state. Following the broadcast, the Ministry of Education planned to conduct an inspection of the education quality in mentioned schools. The Mayor of Riga Nils Usakovs, in his turn, stated that the City Council will not punish the directors as they became victims of a cheep and foolish provocation.

• Valerijs Kravcovs elected to the post of the President of the Russian Community of Latvia

Ex-MP, head of the Liepaja Russian Community Valerijs Kravcovs elected to the post of the president of the Russian Community of Latvia. Mr Kravcovs replaced long-time president of the Russian Community Vjaceslavs Altuhovs. According to Mr Kravcovs, his main task will be to attract young people to the activities of the Community and to establish the house of the Community as now it occupies a small room provided by an entrepreneur. Vesti Segodnya