“Black Russians” in Latvia: what we know about the border group

A group calling itself “Black Russians” has claimed responsibility for an incident on the Latvian-Belarusian border. In a Telegram video, a masked man who introduced himself as Neman said that on the night of 5 to 6 October three “Black Russian” activists crossed the border and clashed with Latvian soldiers. He added that the group will continue sabotage in countries neighbouring Belarus.

“This was just a test of the Latvians, which they failed. Soon you will see something similar in other places along our border. The European Union and NATO are colossi with feet of clay, and they will collapse after our first strike,” Neman said.

What happened on the border

According to Latvian authorities, on the night of 6 October armed men in masks tried to bring 20 migrants into Latvia. They behaved aggressively and threatened the soldiers who were preventing them from crossing. A few hours later the masked men nevertheless managed to get into Latvia. There they damaged a distribution cabinet, stole cameras and fled. Latvian authorities have already opened a criminal case over the incident on a charge of organising a criminal group.

An intelligence services project?

Experts cited by the Latvian portal LSM are convinced that the group cannot act on its own and that it is a structure created by Belarusian and Russian intelligence services for hybrid operations. “What happened on the border is directly linked to the Belarusian and Russian authorities. This is a pure intelligence operation,” said Jānis Sārts, director of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence. Belarusian journalist Dmitry Halko, who lives in Poland, holds a similar view.

In his words, it is probably an intelligence services project: “How real it is, we do not know. But it looks like a proxy structure covering certain actions, to which sabotage on the borders can be attributed if needed: ‘It has nothing to do with us, these are active citizens expressing their position.’ As usual, these are ‘little green men’, only at a new level. They used to be green, and now they have turned black.” Halko is certain that such provocations will continue on a larger scale, and that Belarus and Russia will be able to point to the “Black Russians”.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz