Latvian business waits for Putin's visit. The power and SS legionaries are against.

According to the opinion of the vice-chairman of Council of the largest Latvian private bank Rietumu Arkady Sukharenko, Vladimir Putin's visit to Latvia would have very beneficial impact on the development of business communications between Latvia and Russia.

Visit of the president of Latvia Valdis Zatlers to Moscow and St. Petersburg one and a half years ago became the historical for the Latvian-Russian relations, noted Arkady Sukharenko. He emphasized that it was the first visit of similar level, the president was accompanied by the bigger in the history of the Latvian diplomacy business delegation, and as a result the official relations between two countries found new, human measurement and warmth. All this encouraged many people and the business felt a powerful positive impulse from the authorities.

The ambassador of the Russian Federation in Riga Alexander Veshnyakov many times noted that the positive charge from the visit of the president of Latvia to Russia in 2010 starts being lost.

At the same time the Latvian banker pays attention that now there are no special events at bilateral political level – neither good, nor bad. In his opinion, there are objective reasons: both countries passed the important re-election periods for these one and a half years, new structures of parliaments are elected, presidents exchanged.

“Now it is necessary that already existing framework of our relations acquired new communications, personal contacts and cooperation. I am an optimist and I don't find the reasons of objective character for pauses in the of the Latvian-Russian cooperation, thus that similar pauses, of course, are undesirable and harmful. And here Putin's reciprocal visit to Latvia or at least the fact of active preparation of such event would have very beneficial influence”, considers Arkady Sukharenko.

Russia remains the major and most perspective trade partner for Latvia and thus the key regional and geopolitical player. The specific of the Russian economy provides today high level of stability and invariance of its rather global economic storm. Thus Latvia highly appreciate also that Russia doesn't stand still, it quickly develops.

The chairman of Rietumu board notes: “We as the bank working with the Russian business since the beginning 90th, we see how successful and steadily develop the Russian transit business in Latvia and Baltic, how our mutual trade grows, we feel new inflow of investments from Russia. Today Latvia for the Russian business is, maybe, the most convenient European partner. There is also counter tendency: the western businessmen actively make use of experience, opportunities and communication of our bank for the work with the partners in Russia and also for direct investments to this country. It proceeds not for the first year, confirming the rule: politicians do their business and business – its own. And the climate in business relations is often steadier and predicted, than in international policy”.

According to Arkady Sukharenko, the active development by business of trade and economic relations between Latvia and Russia will set the correct reference points to our politicians and considerably will facilitate the work of diplomats.

However, it isn't absolutely clear how the Russian president can go to the country in which almost celebrate the Nazi criminals at the state level and many ministers in the government are approved to a position as the ambassador of the foreign power - the USA? Now Latvia is the poorest country of Europe and its population is promptly reduced, not a trace remains from the glorified Latvian industry. However the Latvian nationalists are ready to fight with the Russian “invaders” to the last Latvian, besides violating the rights of the Russian-speaking population in Latvia in every possible way...

Therefore hardly the Latvian business should create illusions concerning Vladimir Putin's visit. Perhaps at first it makes sense to estimate as far as the power of Latvia corresponds to interests of the Latvian business?