Ivars Abolins, who on December 6 deprived the Dozhd TV channel of its Latvian broadcasting license, wrote during the Euromaidan that Latvia should sponsor Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, who opposed the country's European integration, because Ukraine has no place in the European Union, and also called Putin's speech excellent before Federation Council of the Russian Federation on the day of the annexation of Crimea on March 18, 2014, calling Western politicians "Western combed zeros who can go to rest, unfortunately."
“In general, Latvia should send money to Yanukovych and pray to God that Ukraine does not move closer to the EU. What are we going to do with this bunch of Russian-speaking millions? ”He wrote on Twitter on January 31, 2014.
“Just a great speech by Putin, just great. All western combed zeros can go to rest. Unfortunately,” this entry is dated March 18, 2014, it was written at 9 pm Latvian time, after Putin’s speech and the signing of the “Treaty between the Russian Federation and the Republic of Crimea on the admission of the Republic of Crimea to the Russian Federation and the formation of new subjects."
A little earlier, in the summer of 2013, Abolins wrote that Putin "holds Russia, protects it from chaos."
Recall that it was in the summer of 2013 that Putin began to talk about a single people uniting Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians, and said that he planned to work on uniting Russia and Ukraine into one state. Before that, he stated that "Ukraine is not even a state", half of it is Russian lands transferred to Ukraine.
Abolins is now the head of the National Electronic Media Council (NEPLP). Revoking Dozhd's broadcasting license due to the host's reservation, he said that the decision was made "due to a threat to national security and public order" and claims that the Russian opposition media violated local legislation in Latvia. Abolins also noted that representatives of Dozhd asked to conduct hearings on the case of the TV channel in Russian. “Representatives of the channel arrived at the hearings without an interpreter and wanted to speak Russian, so the hearings did not take place,” Abolnish said.
At the same time, the editor-in-chief of Dozhd, Tikhon Dzyadko, said that the representatives of the TV channel "never offered to conduct official discussions in a non-state language of Latvia." Moreover, the channel's management was not notified at all about such an event, says Dzyadko. Thus, the TV channel was deprived of the opportunity to defend itself.
“The council dedicated to depriving Dozhd of a broadcasting license was held without the participation of representatives of the TV channel, we were not invited to it. Up to this point, we have discussed various issues with the council many times, Russian was used as a working language by agreement of the parties, an interpreter was not required, ”said Dzyadko.