On Tuesday, Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharov said Latvia detaining the former Sputnik Lithuania editor Marats Kasems was "stupid".
"The most stupid [...] thing that Latvia, Lithuania or Estonia, the Baltic states, could do now is to detain, arrest, and so on,” she said. “This is persecution according to the political motives of the journalist."
Kasems is suspected of providing economic resources to Sputnik, seen as a Kremlin propaganda mouthpiece that has been sanctioned by the European Union. Criminal proceedings have been opened for a possible violation of the sanctions.
Latvia’s intelligence agency said it had been monitoring Kasems’ activities before he arrived in Latvia in late 2022. He had been living and working in Russia for several years.
Kasems was detained on January 3.
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