VILNIUS, October 23. /TASS/. Russian citizens, against whom Riga has unleashed a campaign to force them out of the country, address the Russian Embassy for help much more often, Russian Charge d'Affaires in Latvia Oleg Zykov told TASS in an interview.
"Due to the discriminatory amendments to the migration legislation implemented by the Latvian authorities, the number of applications for assistance in the first nine months of this year increased more than 2.5 times compared to the same period in 2022," he said.
According to him, Russia is ready to receive compatriots if they are forced to leave the territory of the republic. "As the story with the coronavirus shows, our country is capable of handling the task of organizing the return of its citizens from abroad and their reception in the homeland effectively," Zykov said.
As the diplomat noted, there has been a significant increase in the interest of representatives of Latvia's Russian-speaking diaspora in participating in the state program to assist the voluntary resettlement of compatriots living abroad to Russia. There is also interest in another similar mechanism - the bilateral intergovernmental agreement of 1993.