What did Russian MPs demand over Latvian schools in 2018?
A look back at a dispute over language in Latvian secondary schools, reported on 3 April 2018, alongside a Ukrainian sanctions claim from days earlier.
What were Russian lawmakers asking for on 3 April 2018? They were calling for sanctions against Latvia, in response to plans to make Latvian mandatory for all students in the country's secondary schools. Latvia is a country where a quarter of the population is ethnically Russian.
The call came from Russian MPs and concerned the planned language requirement in secondary education. As reported at the time, the dispute placed Latvian-language schooling at the centre of relations between Riga and Moscow.
A separate sanctions claim from Kyiv
A few days earlier, on 30 March 2018, the government of Ukraine stated that it had expelled two Iranians earlier that year. According to Kyiv, they had tried to buy a Kh-31 missile in the Ukrainian capital, in violation of United Nations sanctions.
The two reports were unrelated, but both put sanctions in the news in the first days of April 2018.
