Someone's getting quite upset about NATO forces in the Baltic states. Bear in mind that this is a Russian news story about ships involved in a routine operation that has been going on for years:
Originally Posted by RT News 14 May 2014
Crewmembers of NATO warships deployed to the Latvian port city of Ventspils are behaving like occupying forces, who don’t consider local laws apply to them, the mayor of the city charged. This discredits the alliance in the eyes of Latvians, he added.
“NATO sailors in Ventspils were behaving like pigs, ignored Latvian laws and municipal rules,” Aivars Lembergs told LETA news agency. “Drunk, they urinated in public, right on shop windows, vomited, drank in public, which is not allowed. They picked flowers from flowerbeds and gave them to prostitutes.”
Lembergs, a vocal critic of Latvia’s cooperation with NATO, added that the foreign military personnel “behaved like occupiers, who do not recognize Latvia’s sovereignty.”
The unflattering description comes as the mayor was commenting on an incident in Ventspils, in which several NATO sailors clashed with locals at a night club last weekend. One of the sailors, a 21-year-old Dutch national, sustained serious injuries and had to be taken to hospital with several broken face bones and a concussion. The mayor alleged that the Latvian participants of the fight were simply protecting local women from harassment by the visitors...
Also bear in mind that the naval group visiting Ventspils over the weekend included ships from Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia as well as Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium and France. Besides attending the pre-sail conference of OPEN SPIRIT 2014, a Latvian Navy-led Historic Ordnance Disposal operation in the Baltic, the group celebrated its 41st birthday on Sunday.
On Monday, the group sailed from Ventspils and has since been busy finding and disposing of Second World War ordnance in the Baltic. The Belgian minehunter BELLIS detected this bomb/mine on sonar yesterday morning and subsequently detonated it: