Latvia's agenda for cooperation with US is 'positive' - Braze

RIGA - Latvia's relations with the United States are deep and the cooperation agenda "is positive", said Latvian Foreign Minister Baiba Braze on Latvian Television this morning.

Speaking about the recent meeting of the Baltic foreign ministers with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Braze said that the US side wanted to hear our perspective on the situation in the region. The meeting outlined priorities in the area of security.

According to Braze, the US side is also interested in ensuring that the European Union does not exclude them from its military purchases. They are also interested in the energy sector, but Latvia is stressing in these talks that price and long-term supplies are important to us, and that these are decisions based on economic benefit.

Asked to assess what has changed in Latvia-US relations under Donald Trump's new presidency, Braze said that the new US leadership "thanks us for being good allies".

As for Russia's war against Ukraine and the peace talks initiated by Trump, the Latvian politician said that peace will come at some point, but it is still an open question what it will be. At the moment, she did not want to speculate what the future scenarios of the peace talks might be.

Braze stressed that Latvia is interested in the process being accompanied by a limitation of Russia's capabilities through the maintenance of sanctions. In Ukraine, on the other hand, there should be a withdrawal of troops from the contact line, monitoring of the respect for peace and peace conditions should not weaken Ukraine's military capabilities.

In the minister's view, Russia has not shown any real interest in a lasting peace at the moment, so she believes that the US will have no choice but to "take some steps" at some point to help achieve peace.