Canada Extends and Expands Participation in
NATO Mission in Latvia

On July 10, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced that Canada is expanding its mission in Latvia -- part of NATO's Operation Reassurance aimed at encircling Russia -- from 455 to 540 troops and extending it to 2023. Canada leads NATO's Battlegroup Latvia (one of four in the region), and recently took part in major NATO war exercises there in June. Trudeau made the announcement in Riga following a meeting with Latvian Prime Minister Maris Kucinskis.

Operation Reassurance is based on supporting the reactionary coup regime installed in 2014 in Ukraine backed by Canada, the U.S. and their allies, and disinformation about the referendum by the people of Crimea to become part of Russia.

Trudeau used the occasion to once again target Russia to justify NATO's warmongering and Canada's participation in it. "We certainly hope that the message is passed clearly to President Putin that his actions in destabilizing and disregarding the international rules-based order that has been successfully underpinned by NATO amongst others over the past 75 years or so is extremely important," Trudeau said.

Trudeau met with Latvian President Raimonds Vejonis that same day. He laid flowers at "Freedom Monument" and took part in a number of activities at a military base in Adazi. Trudeau attended a candlelight vigil at a Latvian memorial "to fallen soldiers" and a vehicle display by multinational troops and spoke to Canadian military personnel.

The "Freedom Monument" in Riga is the site of activities which misconstrue the Soviet Red Army's liberation of Latvia from the Nazis during World War II as aggression and occupation. It is also the site of public commemorations of Latvian war criminals who collaborated with the Nazis, spuriously deemed "freedom fighters."

Latvia is one of the countries being appealed to by Tribute to Liberty, a private organization linked to Latvian Nazi collaborators, for funding of the anti-communist monument the Trudeau government is building in Ottawa. This monument, ostensibly to commemorate Canada as a "land of refuge" for "victims of communism" in fact seeks to rehabilitate Nazis and Nazi collaborators like those in Latvia. Public support among Canadians for this extremist project is virtually non-existent, thus necessitating support from foreign funders (as well as from the Canadian government).[1] It also makes clear the hypocrisy of the Trudeau Liberals' hysteria directed against "foreign interference" in Canadian politics, whereas foreign influence in support of Nazis and warmongering against Russia is deemed acceptable and even desirable.

Trudeau's visit to Latvia underscores the dangers posed by Canada's membership in NATO, coupled with the anti-communist ideological assault to turn the experience of World War II on its head to rehabilitate the Nazis and demonize the Red Army and Soviet Union, so as to justify aggression and war crimes in the present.

Note 

1. "Foreign Financing for the Anti-Communist Monument -- A Matter of Great Concern," by Louis Lang, TML Weekly, November 11, 2017.

(TML Weekly, July 14, 2018 - No. 27)

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