WesWorld

Things are serious in the maritime quarter of Riga - loadings have declined 58% compared to this time last year. This reporter interviewed a clerk from a local shipping company "Its true. We just aren't getting the volume of transhippments that we normally handle after the ice of the Gulf of Riga melts. And the railroads are in the same state." New Russian customs proceedures have brought cross-border shipments almost to a standstill, and have produced massive accumulations of freight cars on all available sidings. And the tracks approaching the Latvian/Russian border are jammed with trains for miles, sitting without movement sometimes for days on end. "Those Border Guards ask you to open every crate, root through it all, and leave you to clean up the mess. Its intolerable! How can I run a business like this!??" On the other side of the border, there are no such scenes. "Russian shippers just divert their traffic to Tallinn or Parnu. Its no skin off their nose." Latvian agricultural producers suffer as well from a dire inability to get their produce to Russian marketplaces. "Those Border Guards see infiltrators hiding under every stack of milk cans or wheel of cheese. And don't let them catch you bypassing the Customs Post by a back road or by crossing a field! There are so many of them you haven't got a chance, and they'll take your ox and wagon!"

A Latvian government spokesman noted that the transshipment of goods to and from Russia normally accounts for 60% of Latvia's port and rail loading, and about 12% of the national income. "We will try to make it up.... somehow...."

This reporter explored the causes of this phenomenon with the Russian Ambassador in Riga, Vasili Innokenteivich Ponomarenko. "Government of Russian Federation truly sympathyses with Latvian port workers, railwaymen, and farmers." This last comment was made with the air of a cat licking cream off his whiskers. "Nevertheless, use of Latvian ports and transport by British intelligence for instigating rebellion in Bessarabia showed that previous border regime was insufficient. It has been reinforced, but the new Border Guards will learn in time how to do their job more quickly."

One of Ambassador Ponomarenko's subordinates pointed out that the British operative captured on the train to Odessa was travelling in the same train as a known agent of Latvian intelligence, and was observed picking up materials that had been hidden at a dead drop by the Latvian agent two days before. And the trial of Russian Navy Captain Korniechuk allegedly exposed his contacts with Latvian secret services. "Latvian government has made their own bed by cooperating with British secret services. They can lie in it until they see error of their ways."