Brutal message from Moscow: "This is revenge"

Russian Foreign Minister Maria Zakharova stated that the hatred of the Riga regime toward Russia stems from a desire to avenge the defeat of Latvian collaborationism by Soviet troops during World War II.

“If (U.S. President Donald) Trump suddenly decides to ask what ‘Latvia’ means and why its regime behaves this way, here is the historical background on the topic ‘how I spent the last century,’” she wrote on her Telegram channel, according to RIA Novosti.

She noted that Latvia is one of the few territories where the Nazis managed to achieve the central goal of genocide against the Eastern European population—to “solve the Jewish question”—while the indigenous Latvian population played a leading role in exterminating their neighbors, killing 89 percent of the Jewish community.

“The bloody massacre of their fellow citizens by brutal Latvian nationalists often began even before the Nazis arrived,” added the Russian Foreign Ministry representative.

Zakharova also claimed that Riga today officially honors Holocaust collaborators as independence fighters by annually permitting “legionnaire marches.”

“The hatred of the current Riga regime toward Russia is driven by a desire to avenge the defeat of Latvian collaborationism by Soviet forces,” she concluded.

Earlier, the Latvian Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that it would not allow Russian President Vladimir Putin’s plane to fly through its airspace to Hungary for a potential meeting with U.S. President Donald Trump.

Bulgarian Foreign Minister Georgi Georgiev stated on Monday that Bulgaria is willing to allow the Russian president’s plane to pass through its airspace to meet Trump in Budapest.

Previously, Trump, discussing the possibility of a new meeting with Putin, said that no decision had yet been made. The U.S. leader added that he does not want to waste time and promised to announce his administration’s next steps regarding a potential meeting with the Russian president within two days.