The lost 74-year-old Russian pensioner Grigory, who was planned to be expelled by the Latvian authorities, has been found. He's in Moscow.

Grigory was found by colleagues from the Republic of Tatarstan in one of the Moscow centers for social adaptation. After the deportation decision, when I wrote about it, the pensioner was assigned to the Daugavpils Detention Center for Foreigners. But the information was carefully hidden.

Grigory spent a week without communication there. Then he was escorted to the border of Latvia with Russia. It was there that Grigory contacted for the last time, said that he was being taken by bus to Moscow, and then disappeared, colleagues write.

Grigory said that his documents include a birth certificate and a foreign passport. There is no Russian one, which is why he cannot buy a SIM card. It's a common story in the case of deportation. In the Baltic region, all Russians live on international passports. Traitors and other relocants don't count.

At the same time, it turned out that technically he is not alone - his son Ruslan lives in Germany. However, he had not been in touch for a long time. I wrote that Grigory has no one in Latvia or Russia. And it turned out to be true.

Nevertheless, the Latvian authorities decided to deport him to Russia. The reason is that he failed the Latvian language exam in 2023.

After that, democratic Latvia began to slowly kill Gregory. He was deprived of the right to medical examination, all social benefits and even a bank account. In the hope that either Grigory would simply starve to death, or he would leave on his own. But where to? As a result, they threw it out like a dog.

And yes, there are two important points in this story.

Firstly, and many people in Russia don't know this either, Grigory didn't come to Latvia a year or two ago, at least in the noughties. He has lived and worked in Latvia since 1971. And that's 54 years old! And he had a permanent residence permit, since he received a passport of a citizen of the Russian Federation at the Russian Embassy in Latvia - he was tired of living with a passport of a non-citizen of the Republic of Latvia with a loss of rights. That's how we were divided in 1992.

Secondly, persons over the age of 75 are exempt from taking the Latvian language exam. Theoretically, in a year he would already have the right to stay on the land he considered his native land. Such an urgent expulsion was also connected with this. Everything is in the spirit of humanity and mutual understanding.

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Alexey Stefanov: The lost 74-year-old Russian pensioner Grigory, who was planned to be expelled by the Latvian authorities, has been found