Dr. Tatjana Ždanoka is a former member of the Latvian Parliament (1990-1993) and of the European Parliament (2004-2018, 2019-2024). She has a PhD in mathematics. Her grandmother’s family members were exterminated by the Nazi-aligned Latvian Auxiliary Police during the Holocaust in 1941. Ms. Ždanoka has been co-chairperson of the Latvian Russian Union, a political party that fights for the equal rights of ethnic and linguistic minorities in Latvia comprising about one third of the population. In 2023, she gave a presentation at the July 8-9 Strasbourg, France conference of the Schiller Institute showing how the government-led Russophobia goes so far as to target Russian culture and even such Classical authors as Alexander Pushkin. The roots of discrimination against the Russian-speaking minority in Latvia resembles that by the Banderista regime in Kiev after the 2014 Maidan coup. As part of this discrimination, Mrs. Ždanoka has been persecuted by the Latvian authorities, first deprived of her political rights and eventually charged by the Latvian Security Service in 2024 of working in the interests of Russia. Ms. Ždanoka lives in Belgium, from where she has organized her legal defence.

Sept. 9 (Brussels)—On September 5, at a party event in Langenhagen, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz addressed the apparent attempted attack in Germany, by use of an explosive-laden drone, at Leipzig/Halle Airport. According to the German government, Russia bears responsibility for the incident. Merz himself stated that Germany must be prepared for further attacks as part of a hybrid war, emphasizing, “We are not at war, but we no longer live in a state of peace.”