Moscow's ex-mayor plans escape

Latvia's interior minister Lina Mūrniece has rejected ex-Moscow mayor Juri Lushkov's application for a residency permit. The online paper Ir agrees with the decision, even if it says Lushkov is obviously preparing to flee: "Lushkov certainly can't be described as a person with a positive or even neutral position towards the Latvian state. That would be too much to expect of a Russian chauvinist who spent his childhood and youth under Stalin. And apart from that Lushkov's vision of Russian as second official language in Latvia remains unforgotten. … He himself has meanwhile explained that he doesn't want to leave Russia for good and needs the residency permit only to be able to move around freely within the Schengen zone. But at the end of the day this basically means he's getting ready to flee a regime he was actually very fond of as long as he was part of its leadership. Things are no longer what they were under Stalin, when the loss of one's office often meant the loss of one's head, but there are no real guarantees."

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