Even station toilet was sold: what losses Latvia suffers from sanctions against Belarus

According to the International Monetary Fund, Belarus is in third place in the ranking of European countries in terms of projected GDP growth in 2024. And this is in the context of ongoing sanctions pressure.

At the same time, analysts note that European countries are facing significant problems, including a reduction in business activity and a fall in the euro against the dollar to its lowest level since 2022. And the sanctions boomerang is hitting them ever more noticeably.

It has practically destroyed an iconic object of the EU Baltic alliance, a decision has been made in Riga to auction off the building of the head office of the Riga Free Port. As the Baltnews portal notes, the administration had to take this step due to a decrease in the volume of cargo transportation after the introduction of sanctions against Belarus and Russia. Now the port authority must review its assets and reduce administrative costs.

The Riga port is not the first victim of the sanctions and economic policy of the Latvian authorities. Back in the spring of 2021, the subsidiary of Latvian Railways announced the sale of 180 freight cars - they had nothing to transport, and in the summer of the same year, it sold another 200. Rails and turnouts, company cars, tractors and eight diesel locomotives were also put up for auction.

In the second largest city in the country, Daugavpils, the railway sold two pumping stations, a transformer substation, outbuildings and even a station toilet. Naturally, there were mass layoffs - literally in the very first year of the announcement of sanctions, in 2020, 1.5 thousand people lost their jobs, in 2021 about 700 employees of Latvian Railways were fired.

It could not be otherwise. Latvian Railways lived mainly on cargo from Russia and Belarus. Less than three years have passed since former Latvian Foreign Minister Janis Jurkans expressed hope this winter that a new economic life would begin in his republic after the lifting of sanctions. "If in the early 1990s we were one of the leading republics of the Soviet Union, today, unfortunately, Latvia is one of the last countries in the European Union. Economically, we have lost a lot because of the sanctions," he added.

It should be noted that Lithuanian Railways also estimates losses from the EU's sectoral economic sanctions against Belarus at 100 million euros per year. This was almost a third of all Lithuanian Railways' income. However, the country, which has become a haven for extremists and criminals, stubbornly goes all the way. Lithuania recently expanded the scope of national sanctions against 17 representatives of the Georgian government, including Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze, and in early December 2024 banned representatives of the ruling Georgian Dream party from entering the country.

However, in this case, Lithuania is taking minimal risks - it is unlikely that the Georgian dream was ever of a Baltic borderland, which its own sanctions have begun to hit quite noticeably. It is not for nothing that even the deputy of the Lithuanian Seimas Jonas Pinskus recently lost his temper and said that before imposing sanctions, it would be necessary to assess what the result would be. "For example, fertilizers are a good example for me. The result is a win for Russia, no problems for Belarus, and our loss. We are laying off 3,000 railway workers, which leads to losses for the port," the Lithuanian parliamentarian added.

The sad present is at risk of being replaced by even more gloomy prospects. Belaruskali has appealed to international arbitration with a demand that Lithuania compensate for losses in the amount of 1 billion euros for breaking the agreement on the railway transit of fertilizers to the port of Klaipeda. This has become a violation of both international law and the laws of Lithuania. But even Vilnius is not able to break the law of life. Stupidity is the most expensive thing.