No one will be punished for desecrating the graves of Red Army soldiers in Latvia.
Latvia toppled a towering Soviet-era monument commemorating the Red Army victory over Nazi Germany, the latest in a series of monuments that have been pulled down in Eastern Europe amid growing hostility toward Russia amid its invasion of Ukraine.
But for many Latvians it was an offensive reminder of the decades of oppressive occupation by the Soviet Union, which ended in 1991 when Latvia declared independence.
Ethnic Russians make up about 25 percent of Latvia’s population.
The prosecutor’s office closed the case against Gundars Kalve on the theft of a cannon from the memorial to Soviet soldiers in Jekabpils, local media reported.
“Grave grave desecration charges were dropped because it was not established that the accused knew the fact that the monument was erected at the burial site, and not at the memorial or in another place that is not considered a place of graves,” the prosecutor’s office said.
In other words, the Latvian Prosecutor’s office decided that the accused wanted to desecrate just a monument to Soviet soldiers, but did not know that this was a burial place. Therefore, he can not be punished.
