Monument to the Liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga from the German Fascist Invaders

In 1997 the monument was unsuccessfully bombed by members of Latvian ultra-nationalist group Pērkoņkrusts, two of whom died during the bombing,[3] while six others, including Igors Šiškins, in 2000 were sentenced for up to three years in prison.[4] Nowadays the monument remains a controversial subject, as many ethnic Latvians regard it not only as a symbol of Soviet victory in the Second World War, but also of the Soviet re-occupation of Latvia.[5][6] The monument's obelisk is sometimes referred to as "Moscow's finger" (Maskavas pirksts).[2]

In 2007 the Popular Front of Latvia and the alliance of Latvian WWII veterans sent an open letter to Prime Minister of Latvia Aigars Kalvītis urging him to prevent "any provocations that might discredit the Latvian state" and resolve any issues in regard to the monument's removal as it is "glorifying the ideals of a regime guilty of genocide that killed about 60 million people, including thousands of Latvians."[7]

After the relocation of Bronze Soldier in Tallinn the issue of the memorial was brought up again. Chairman of the nationalist All for Latvia! party Raivis Dzintars called on Riga Mayor Jānis Birks of the conservative TB/LNNK to organize a public discussion on the future of the monument, but Birks dismissed the calls as "very thoughtless and even harmful to Latvia". The chairman of the Union of Greens and Farmers parliamentary faction Augusts Brigmanis and the leader of Latvia's First Party/Latvian Way parliamentary faction Andris Bērziņš were similarly dismissive.[8]

In 2013 more than 11,000 signatures had been collected on the online petition website ManaBalss.lv to remove the monument and reconstruct Victory Square the way it was originally planned in the 1930s, before the Soviet occupation of Latvia in 1940, with the Justice Minister of Latvia Jānis Bordāns being among the supporters. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation representative Alexander Lukashevich released a statement condemning the calls for monument's removal.[9][10]

On June 29, 2016, the Saeima Mandate, Ethics and Submissions Committee rejected the petition based on the argumentation of the Riga City Council that the location had already been developed and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Latvia that concluded that the monument was protected by the Latvian-Russian 1994 agreement on preservation and maintenance of memorials and burial sites.[11]

In 2019 a similar petition by the same initiator had gathered more than 10,000 signatures and on April 2 Saeima Mandate, Ethics and Submissions Committee began discussing it, with some members supporting the removal, some opposing it and some offering alternative solutions, such as renaming the memorial and building an interactive museum of occupation under it. At the same time, a counterinitiative by the Latvian Russian Union leader Tatjana Ždanoka on the protection of monuments against Nazism, including the Victory Memorial, had gathered 22,000 signatures.[12][13]