Latvia bans Russian TV host over Hitler remarks

Latvia on Thursday said it would ban entry to a Russian TV host after he called Hitler a “very brave man” while disparaging Kremlin critic Alexei Navalny.

“The glorification of Nazism in any form is unacceptable to Latvia,” Foreign Minister Edgars Rinkevics wrote on Twitter.

Vladimir Solovyov, known as a Kremlin propagandist, is on a list of 35 people whom Navalny’s team has urged the European Union to sanction.

Hitler “was personally a very brave man”, Solovyov could be heard saying in a live broadcast.

“Unlike this codpiece Fuhrer (Navalny), he (Hitler) did not get out of army service. He fought honourably in the First World War,” Solovyov said.

Navalny, an opposition leader who is in jail on various charges, has also been accused of defaming a 94-year-old World War II veteran in a suit that could bring additional penalties.

The campaigner referred to the veteran and others who appeared in a pro-Kremlin video as “traitors”.

Latvia and the other Baltic states of Estonia and Lithuania, which were once ruled by Moscow and are now all members of the EU and the eurozone, have been highly critical of Russia over Navalny’s detention and a crackdown on protests.