Latvian president: Russia won’t attack NATO ‘in a classic military way’

Ben Smith: You were just in Silicon Valley, and met Sam Altman. Those companies build and they create jobs in the United States and they are regulated in Europe. What do you make of that?

Edgars Rinkēvičs: The purpose of that discussion was actually to look into cooperation because we are currently establishing a National Center for Artificial Intelligence. We started that primarily out of security concerns [over] interference in electoral processes.

But then we understood that if we want to be successful, we actually have to build AI in Latvia, and we need to cooperate with those companies. Most of them were [citing] GDPR, this privacy regulation of the EU. It is absolutely clear that Europe is lagging behind the United States.

Ben: Do you think they should loosen these regulations?

Rinkēvičs: I think we have to seriously revisit them, and we have to listen to the industry. There are concerns that we have in Europe about privacy — you know, each and every country gets obsessed with something. I do believe that in order to be successful in artificial intelligence, we need to strike the right balance between industry and its needs, and also the concerns of our citizens.

Ben: A Russian armed drone, I believe, crashed in your country. Do you think that NATO’s response has been adequate to that kind of incident?

Rinkēvičs: No. That is the third country that has this kind of incident. We had those incidents in Romania and Poland. The difference is that the Baltic States do not have their own interceptors. We have a NATO mission, that mission is basically a patrolling mission. We need to have a serious discussion and uniform response by the whole alliance, regardless if it is Romania or Poland with their capabilities or it’s Latvia or Lithuania with the capabilities provided by NATO allies. But look, the investigation is still ongoing. It’s going to be prepared and finalized by the beginning of October.

Ben: Russia remains very aggressive with its intelligence activities — there was the story of [veteran Latvian-Russian politician] Tatjana Ždanoka’s leaked emails with her handler, there’s alleged sabotage all over Europe, they continue to try to interfere with the election here. Do you think they are deterrable?

Rikevics: I don’t think I can answer about “deterrable,” but I definitely believe that we can push back. We need to understand that Russia, at least in the foreseeable future, is not going to attack any NATO countries in a classic military way. But hybrid warfare has been ongoing since, I don’t know, 2018. Since the [Sergei] Skripal incident in the United Kingdom we have had incidents all over NATO and European Union countries. We detained some people in March who threw Molotov cocktails at our Occupation Museum. We have more and more cases where we see that Telegram is being used to hire people for subversive activity. And that’s apart from migration being used as a hybrid weapon by Russia against Finland, by Belarus against Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland.

Ben: How do you persuade your NATO allies to allow Ukraine to use their weapons to strike inside Russia?

Rinkēvičs: It’s about individual NATO member states. It’s about Washington when it comes to certain weapon systems and it’s about Berlin when it comes to another weapon system. NATO as such does not make collective decisions on those issues.

I would say that primarily one should understand the two key issues.

Number one, Ukraine is entering a very, very difficult winter. The Russians have been using drones and missiles against energy infrastructure, against civilians, and [Ukraine] need to have proper means to respond to target Russian military — and they’ve always underscored Russian military — infrastructure.

Number two, we already had this period where everyone was hoping about the counter offensive last year. But let’s face it, you can’t expect the Ukrainians to fight with their hands tied, and you can’t expect any political process if the Russians do not see that they can’t move forward, be it in the east, be it in the south, or be it in Ukraine itself.

Ben: Do you think the Ukrainian offensive into Russia was a good idea?

Rinkēvičs: I am not a military expert, but I think that it provided some morale boost in Ukraine. And I think it gives some political clout for whatever process we are going to see, because that’s what we are discussing — but no exact dates or framework has been established about the second peace summit.

Ben: Can you imagine a situation in which Latvia and Russia resume normal relations?

Rinkēvičs: At this point and in the observable future, it will be increasingly difficult. But even if there is any kind of ceasefire or political settlement or some kind of political process, we still will have a reason to suspect that Russia is going to use the time to recover when it comes to the economy, when it comes to its military might, and Russia will try to resume military operations. We already have a history of that. We have the 2015 so-called Minsk Agreements. Seven years later, Mr Putin decided to invade Ukraine.

I would agree with those who are saying that any kind of long lasting solution includes Ukraine’s membership in NATO and also in the European Union. By the way, I think that membership in NATO is easier to achieve than in the European Union. People on this side of the Atlantic sometimes do not understand all the complexity of the single market.

Ben: Latvia is seen as a frontrunner to win a seat on the Security Council. What would it mean specifically in terms of this conflict?

Rinkēvičs: We have a broader agenda for the UN Security Council. It includes climate change. It also includes something that we believe we can give to small island states who are actually under the threat of extinction, because of our own history and experience with state continuity.

Ben: In your speech to the General Assembly, you spoke about supporting permanent African representation on the Security Council. It sounds like that’s part of the alliance you’re building for that seat?

Rinkēvičs: It seems a long way from Latvia but there are some similarities… This week, we had meetings with the president of Central African Republic, the prime minister of Chad, and the president of Guinea Bissau. We do talk about regional conflicts because those are interlinked. The Wagner Group is very active in Africa. You can’t ignore one part of the world and then all of a sudden they wake up and see that bad things are happening. Actually to some extent, Ukraine is currently fighting an anti-colonial war, or that we were under a Soviet occupation that was close to what many African countries went through before they gained independence.