Nils Usakovs

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Nils Ušakovs (2012)

Nils Ušakovs ( Russian: Нил Валерьевич Ушаков / Nil Valerjewitsch Uschakov , born June 8, 1976 in Riga , then Latvian SSR , Soviet Union ) is a Latvian journalist and politician . He is a member of the Russian-speaking minority in Latvia , former mayor of Riga and chairman of the Sociāldemokrātiskā partija "Saskaņa" .

Life

Ušakovs' grandparents moved to Riga in 1940. His mother was a Russian language teacher , his father an engineer. He attended school in the Imanta district and studied social sciences at the University of Latvia . In 1999 Ušakovs received Latvian citizenship. In 2002 he graduated from the University of Southern Denmark with a master's degree.

journalism

Ušakovs worked for the Baltic department of the Russian TV channel NTW and Latvian television . He later worked as an editor for the newspapers Respublika (Республика) and Telegraf (Телеграф), as well as the Russian-language TV channel TV5 Riga and the ITAR-TASS news agency . Since 2006, Ušakovs has devoted himself entirely to politics.

politics

In 2005 Ušakovs joined the Tautas Saskaņas partija at the invitation of Jānis Urbanovičs . When the Saskaņas Centrs alliance, consisting of several left-wing parties, was formed in November of the same year , Ušakovs was elected chairman. From 2006 he was a member of the 9th Saeima .

After the Latvian local elections in June 2009, he was elected by the coalition of Saskaņas Centrs and Latvijas Pirmā partija / Latvijas Celš as chairman of the Riga City Council and thus mayor of Riga. He is the first ethnic Russian in this post since the restoration of Latvia's independence in 1991. Since then he has been pleading for rapprochement with Russia , the expansion of freight traffic in the Riga port and the expansion of tourism, as Riga was hit particularly hard by the financial crisis from 2007 onwards .

In December 2009, Ušakovs was the focus of a scandal when an extract from the minutes of the city council's meeting was published. Ušakovs used very crude Russian swear words.

In the elections for the 11th Saeima Ušakovs was together with Urbanovičs candidate of the Saskaņas Center for the office of Prime Minister.

On April 10, 2019, Nils Ušakovs was sacked as mayor of Riga by the pro-Russian Latvian opposition party Harmonie ( Sociāldemokrātiskā partija “Saskaņa” (SDPS)). The background to this is a corruption scandal involving the municipal transport companies, in which both the deputy mayor and the mayor appear to be involved. Environment and regional minister Juris Pūce justified the dismissal with the "non-fulfillment of legal obligations and violations of official regulations". There have not yet been sufficient detailed investigations into the allegations of corruption or these are still ongoing.

In the 2019 European elections (May 26th), Nils Ušakovs stood as the top candidate for the party "Saskaņa" sociāldemokrātiskā partija, and his deputy mayor of Riga, Andris Ameriks, who was also dismissed, came in second on the list. Many Latvians see this as an attempt to come to terms with the corruption scandal or to avoid persecution by the Latvian authorities by giving the two politicians the immunity of a European politician. As things stand, both Ušakovs and Ameriks have made it into the European Parliament.

Private life

Ušakovs has been married to the ethnic Latvian Iveta Strautiņa for the third time since 2014 . From 2010 to 2014 he was married to Jeļena Sucharevja for the second time.

His hobbies include jogging and cycling. In May 2011 he suffered a collapse at the Riga Marathon and was temporarily in a coma in a Berlin hospital.

In addition to his native Russian , Ušakovs is also fluent in Latvian and English . He also speaks German , Swedish and Danish .

Web links

Commons : Nils Ušakovs  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Nils Ušakovs  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.velesanas2009.cvk.lv  
  2. ↑ Par Nilu Ušakovu
  3. ^ Nil Ushakov elected Riga mayor , July 1, 2009, ITAR-TASS
  4. ↑ Hannes Gamillscheg: In the old Russian way ( memento of July 4, 2009 in the Internet Archive ) in the Frankfurter Rundschau of June 30, 2009
  5. ↑ Latvia's Tiger Economy Loses Its Bite , The Nation, October 28, 2009
  6. ↑ Ušakovs atvainojas par necenzēto sarunu domes sēdes laikā
  7. ↑ Nākamnedēļ būs zināmi visu lielāko partiju premjera amata kandidāti (Latvian)
  8. ↑ Mayor of Latvian Capital Tries to Bridge Old Divide.
  9. ↑ Riga mayor: 'I'm a Russian-speaking Latvian and patriot of my country'.
  10. ↑ Riga Mayor Usakovs re-marries
  11. ↑ Ušakovs nogādāts Vācijas klīnikā (Ušakovs admitted to a German clinic) (Latvian)
personal data
SURNAME Ušakovs, Nils
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Ushakow, Nil Valeryevich; Ушаков, Нил Валерьевич (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Latvian journalist and politician, Mayor of Riga
DATE OF BIRTH June 8, 1976
PLACE OF BIRTH Riga