Daugavpils portal Chayka.lv will also create content in Latvian / Article

“Stop the war. I’m not screaming, I’m yelling,” Arturs Smolyaninovs sang at the event organized by the Chayka.lv portal on Saturday in the cultural space “New East” or “Jaunie Austrumi” created by the active youth of Daugavpils. The former actor of the “Sovremennik” theater and also of the Kremlin oppositionist Kirill Serebrennikov was forced to leave his homeland in the fall of 2022 to avoid going to prison, because he publicly condemned the war in Ukraine and called Russia a criminal state. In Latvia, he created the group “chelovek.cilveks.human”, he is the author of music and lyrics. He is one of the 24 heroes of the “We are here” video stories, chayka.lv editor Inna Plavoka explained.

“These are stories about people who had to leave their country – Ukrainians who fled the war. Russian citizens who fled Russia – because of the regime and their active position, and the people of Belarus who also fled to Latvia because it was dangerous there. threatened with imprisonment and persecution,” said Plavoka. “They have all found refuge in Latvia. We created stories about people living in Daugavpils and Latgale.”

Portal chayka.lv as independent in 2018 start-up Media Plavoka was created with the support of a grant from the US Embassy.

“I realized that what journalists here in Daugavpils have been doing so far is not really journalism,” Plavoka said briefly.

Such an opposition portal plays an especially important role in the conditions of the information war implemented by Russia, when people on the border trying to get information in Russian can still fall into the trap of Russian propaganda media. When registering chayka.lv, Plavoka provided information that in the future it will also create content in Latvian, as this is self-evident in Latvian conditions. Now it is starting to become a reality – the news of the Latvian editorial office of “Chaika” is still in the test version on the “Facebook” website for a week, said journalist Anna Luīze Ruskule.

“As the Russian-language version of “Chaika” has so far advocated for equality and human rights and reflecting objective information, we and the Latvian editorial staff can continue and expand the range of these topics – reflect the democratic values ​​that we as Latvia represent in general,” said Ruskule. “To talk about events in Ukraine, about LGBT rights, about events in Ukraine, about the diversity of opinions, which is very important for independent and objective journalism.”

The director of the office of the Nordic Council of Ministers in Latvia, Stefans Āriksons, who took part in the event of the “Chaika” portal on Saturday, emphasized that the organization he leads, which has had an office in Daugavpils for three years, has an important presence in this region.

“The main thing for us is to support this media and them [chayka.lv]of course, it is important to work in the national language as well,” said Āriksons. “If it also supports the strengthening of the Latvian language in Daugavpils, it will of course be a great pleasure.”

In April, the number of unique visits to the chayka.lv portal reached 80,000, the content of this opposition media has close to 7,000 followers on the “YouTube” and “Instagram” channels.

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