Egils Helmanis is interviewed by Māris Liopa, director of the forestry and related industries portal zemeunvalsts.lv, and Pauls Rēvelis, editor of zemeunvalsts.lv.

We should start with a question we often hear from people in various Latvian municipalities – the return of the word “austerity” and the lack of funding. How, and do you, feel it in Ogre?

Latvian municipalities, Ogre Municipality among them of course, feel and see that the government does not understand us. It seems the Cabinet of Ministers is operating somewhat detached from real life, and it has been going on that way for quite some time. The government believes that municipalities are “over-funded” (that we have money in abundance). For instance, at the start of the year we were stripped of 7 million euros, which is a great deal of money for Ogre Municipality. In effect, that is almost the entire sum we could have invested in the municipality's development. Such a move by the government clearly shows a failure to grasp what is going on, when the governing parties fight only over the corridors of power in Riga and take little interest in the regions. I do not see a single real force that would currently want to lay claim to power, should it change hands.

I would say that the era in which many valuable things – manliness, for example – have been and still are attacked has unfortunately borne its fruit, and not the kind we in Latvia would need.

It is very sad that far too often we are timid and reserved. Recently I heard a saying – “what one Latvian cannot do, two cannot do; what two cannot do, three cannot do; what three cannot do, four cannot do; the more you cannot do, the more of a Latvian you are…” I will repeat myself: it is sad if that is how we judge our opportunities and our potential. Gradually a “new style”, or a new course – call it what you will – has crept into the corridors of power, namely, we make no effort not to be poor, but we try very hard not to be well-off or wealthy. As long as entrepreneurs are not respected at national level, as long as at national level each person does not stand up for and support their entrepreneurs, I expect nothing good, however optimistic I may be. An entrepreneur and a good steward are the foundation of everything. This age is trying to destroy both.

For example, I drive through Riga, I look and I read: “For sale! To let! For sale! To let!”

Do you also hear about austerity-related problems from colleagues in other municipalities? There are various choices – to spend sensibly, or simply to close something down…

The situation varies from one municipality to another. I know that in Balvi Municipality the parish administrators were dismissed, and in Gulbene the parish administrations were merged. In my view that is a serious mistake, because every place needs a steward, someone who looks after it. In Talsi a good many municipal employees were let go, and there are changes in Rēzekne and Smiltene too. That is what the government does not understand – their actions will clearly echo through this year's budget, which may well “fall short”.

When I began working at Ogre Municipality Council, the municipality was building a dam. In the course of the construction we “went” several metres into the bed of the River Ogre, the current shifted slightly and washed away the opposite bank. That is how it goes with decisions – where they will take us, how they will play out. The government's decisions can affect the state budget, and as a result we may have to borrow.

If municipalities are asked to cut anything more – there is nothing left to cut.

Returning to the question of the government and the municipalities – what grounds do government ministers and officials have for believing that Latvia's municipalities are practically swimming in money (that they are “over-funded”)?

First of all, representatives of the government and the ministries do not work in municipalities and have no understanding of municipal work, or only a superficial one. For example, there is no need to centralise everything. Ogre Municipality has kept its rural schools, and we also have parish administrations. VARAM says parish administrations are not needed. Hold on – in our municipality they are needed! It is good stewardship when a parish has an administrator who knows well what is going on, what matters and what is needed. The administrators call me and let me know if something happens, if people have something important to resolve, and so on. If we abolish this intermediate tier, we will distance ourselves considerably from the municipality's residents. Resolving such matters cannot be laid on the shoulders of the residents' councils that are to be set up.

What do you think of the planned residents' councils?

They are provided for in law. It is clear that everyone must have the chance to speak out, there is no doubt about that. Whether the forthcoming residents' councils will not be something of a game played with democracy, I am not convinced. Why? We have municipal council elections, we take part in Saeima elections, and there will be yet another institution that will also be elected.

Ogre Municipality had one of the highest levels of competition for council seats of any municipality in Latvia. Understandably, a large share of the candidates were not elected, since the municipal council has 23 members. What is happening now? Some of those not elected are planning to “head off” to the residents' councils. If the municipality's voters have already told those particular people, or the political force or list they represented: “No, this time we do not want you on the council!”, these people now want to express themselves in the residents' councils. How far-sighted is that?

I believe every parish must have a good, strong and competent administration – if it does, residents' councils will not really be necessary. The parish administrator works on the ground, talks to the residents, listens to them, calls them together where necessary, and is accountable for what has been done or remains to be done. Residents' councils bear no such accountability.

Ogre Municipality has 16 parishes. Back when I started working at the council, I was told that I needed set consultation hours here, on site, and that I should certainly also hold consultations with residents in every parish and town. I replied that we have four towns and 16 parishes, and it was doubtful whether it would be productive to devote 20 days a month to “not being on site”. If I spend 20 days receiving and listening to people, which I do day in, day out anyway, when am I going to do anything else?

In my view the legislator in Latvia has for some time now been too weak and passes weak laws – residents' councils, the official secrets law and so on. There seem to be visible efforts to destroy leaders by splitting up any kind of responsibility as far as possible. There are matters that unquestionably are and will be decided collectively, and there are matters where a single decision-maker suffices. For example, if a ditch in some parish is silted up, how many people need to decide on clearing it?

Unfortunately, we have reached a situation where we lag behind our neighbours in the country's development; we do not like it, but we also lag behind because of our style of thinking: where there is no clarity, there is no movement forward either. Latvia is in the European Union, which brings together different countries with different speeds of development and different experience. The USA, with its own interests and goals, is an important partner for us. All of that is very good, but in my view it is problematic if you have no goals or directions of development of your own and far too often have to look over your shoulder to see what someone else will think, say or advise…

For example, it was only when the war began and Russia invaded Ukraine that Latvia finally removed its “occupation monuments”. Getting rid of them took far too long – more than 30 years! If we look at our recent history, we see that it is often the very same people who protest against commemorating the legionnaires on 16 March, dismiss ministers for taking part in the 16 March remembrance events, and defend the “occupation monument”. It has been torn down, three years have passed, and nothing has been put in its place.

There is Victory Park.

Victory Park without content is nothing, if we recall its original idea. It was meant to be a place of remembrance where we honour and remember our riflemen, legionnaires and national partisans. In Estonia the monument to the legionnaires stands in the city centre; in Latvia we still ignore our own.

Independence Square is taking shape in Ogre, where there will be sculptures of our legionnaires, there will be the Kurelis men, there will be a sculpture of Vilis Janums, there will be two (divided) Staburags rocks… We are also working on the Freedom Road museum, which we plan to open on 4 May. Everyone should think about freedom and the road to it. In my view we weep and complain too much, we are too “fixated” on the repressions. I have had the honour of meeting the former legionnaire Jānis Kažociņš, whom the aforementioned V. Janums led out of encirclement. Asked how he was doing, he replied: “The more you groan, the more it hurts.” Moaning and groaning also makes your arms drop. Latvians are not a huge nation, but we have many heroes, talents and achievements, and so in Ogre we want to honour the fighters – figuratively speaking, to give a booster jab to the nation's fighting spirit. We are strong and mighty, and that has to be felt in everyday life too.

How is support for Ukraine organised in the municipality?

It is continuous, the cooperation is very close. The situation at the front has been unclear for quite some time now; the enemy has “run itself dry”, because those who started the war did not expect such resistance or such bleeding of the invaders. I think that if anyone continues to talk about a ceasefire, it would only benefit the enemy, letting them catch their breath, build up their strength and again throw themselves at somebody. A ceasefire is not the right idea or tactic. Nothing in Russia will change; it will stop only when there is a firm fist in front of it that punches it in the face. Talks with Russia are a sign of weakness; they understand only brute force there.

Back when I was studying in Russia, I was often reproached that in Latvia we were supposedly offending local Russians. If I tried to explain anything, nobody listened. When I put it briefly: “It's our country, we do what we want!”, they understood me at once and praised the good answer.

If you answer – in words or in deeds – just as brazenly and confidently as your opponent, you will be understood. That is the language of the neighbouring country; they understand no other.

It is similar in Muslim countries, and I have spent a fair amount of time there too. Those countries have clear and very harsh, even merciless, legislation – a step to the right or to the left and you will be in serious trouble. There such a system and approach works; we in Europe and in Latvia do not understand it, but… We must not forget that Europe is not the centre of the world, and that laws and customs elsewhere are very, very different. Often we do not understand and do not accept theirs, forgetting that ours may be neither comprehensible nor acceptable to them.

How long, in your view, will the war in Ukraine go on? Could it not happen that “the missiles start flying our way”?

As long as Russian propaganda talks about us, we are their target, because hatred is being deliberately stirred up against us. The propagandists produce plenty of different stories about me too. In my view, those responsible in Latvia treat all of this very frivolously.

I have been to Ukraine 17 times since the war began. My conclusion is that here at home people do not understand that there are a great many Russian soldiers (the country still has large reserves of manpower and nobody cares about these people); in an emergency we would need at least 100,000 members of the National Guard – with a good defence, a position can be held at 1:5.

The front line in Ukraine is 1,500 km long, and along it we see thousands of Russian soldiers' corpses, which stay right there. But… they keep coming and coming… I recently spoke with one of the Ukrainian commanders, who estimated that his unit eliminates around 100 of the enemy a day, but… every hundred enemy dead “takes” about 10 of their own. There are losses on the Ukrainian side every day too.

What else have I concluded? The closer you are to the front, the more coherent the decisions become; correspondingly, the further away, the more incoherently much of it happens. To put it by way of analogy – luckily we are very far away, and the decisions are what they are. Every step a decision-maker takes may cost someone their life; in the front-line zone decisions are valued highly. On one of the last occasions an Iskander missile came down 700 m from us. In this connection it is again fitting to recall the legionnaires and Vilis Janums, who set up the Latvian centre Bērzaine in Germany. Why was it created in Freiburg? It is one of the furthest points in Germany, next to Switzerland. As far as possible from the Soviet lands, in hilly terrain where you can defend yourself well.

What is happening in Latvia now? From my own experience: representatives of the Ministry of Defence come to Ogre, and I tell them that the centre of Ogre is not the most suitable place for a military base; I suggest moving it to Rembate, by the former school, and moreover there is missile defence right next to it. What do they answer? “We're not interested in that, we build bases for peacetime.”

My assessment is brief – as a civilian who has seen and experienced the war in Ukraine, I have a clearer understanding of military matters. Why do only people with the relevant experience think this way? Kyiv and the front are two different worlds. Many things are created on the basis of illusions.

To close this topic, when I met American soldiers, they were interested in where to go and where to stay if several thousand troops had to be stationed in our municipality. I told them about the Rembate school. “An ideal spot,” they replied.

People who are far from the war and from the events and processes connected with it do not understand the situation. They do not understand because they are far away. I dare say that in Latvia too, more than a few people effectively “push” what is happening further afield out of their minds – “that's everyday life, it doesn't affect me directly”. I think the opposite: if it were to happen that Russia invaded us, I would be one of the first they would try to get rid of; I have no other way out and never will, than to take up a weapon and fight. What would I be upset about? If I went to get a weapon and were told, for example: “A bomb hit the arms depot at our base, we have nothing to give you.” My grandfather fell at the age of 27 defending Bauska; God has already granted me almost twice as long. There is nothing better than to depart this life fighting for your country (if, of course, there is such a need), and once you have accepted that, this feeling gives you freedom.

On that note, a question about a topical subject – Ogre Municipality and civil defence.

We have set up shelters in the basements of buildings. In this period I have concluded that various practical matters are not clear to people. For example, all the bomb shelters built in Soviet times were built for the needs of a nuclear war. At the moment when (by the thinking of the time) a missile is launched from America, it will fly for a certain length of time; whereas when a missile is launched in the Pskov region, that will be about 5 minutes. Air attacks usually begin at 4.00–5.00 in the morning: a minute to come to your senses, a minute to get dressed, and the rest of the time to take cover. The shelter has to be close at hand.

Ogre State Gymnasium runs training on how to use drones – how they work in Ukraine, how these technologies are developing, how that forces us to change and to look at things differently. If we look around, drones are used quite widely (I mean in civilian life – fighting fires, property management, window cleaning and so on) – operators for them will be needed. When the war began, one enemy column near Kyiv was destroyed thanks to a teenage boy who had a drone at home. At the time, neither such skills nor such specialists existed even in the army.

The Forest Museum, which has been in Ogre for a long time, is now looking for other premises and more space…

Let me start by saying that the Forest Museum should not be moved anywhere, because it fits in very well with us here in Ogre. Why? There is Ogre Technical School, and the museum would be right next to it. One of the reasons museums are needed is to tell the younger generation and give them a sense of how things were, what happened and where we are heading now. If the Forest Museum could be included in the technical school's training system and were, moreover, located here in Ogre, the situation would be very positive indeed. At the same time, I want to stress that this is a matter of national scale that could not be the responsibility of the municipality alone. A local history museum, in which we keep information about the people of our municipality up to date (and not only that, of course), is one thing; the Forest Museum is unquestionably a national matter. We in Ogre can play our part, agreeing on specific conditions, but this question definitely has to be resolved at national level.

You have a good grasp of how to resolve questions of this kind. We say “the forestry sector”, of course, but the sector is made up of many different businesses, each with its own plans and interests.

As I mentioned at the start of our conversation, in Latvia there is a tendency to place far too many duties on the shoulders of municipalities, which then literally “choke” on the sheer volume of those duties. Ogre Technical School is a state technical school. Where museums are concerned, the hardest work is often gathering and compiling everything – in this case that has already been done. Now the collection would need to be housed, for example by building a hangar next to the technical school. That would be a joint effort by the Ministry of Education and Science together with everyone else.

Much has been said and asked in recent years about cooperation and the lack of it – is the problem, at bottom, an inability to cooperate, or a lack of cooperation altogether? For example, Ogre Municipality, Ogre Technical School and the people who currently maintain and look after the Forest Museum's materials might be “for” it, yet as soon as you take the proposal to the state institutions, they will start talking in the ministries and the corridors of government about money, austerity and difficulties, and everything will grind to a halt. No money, no cooperation.

As we said earlier, there is no need to look for ways of not being able to do something. If we want to, there are excellent opportunities to find the best form of cooperation and to take a step towards the others. Finding the money (you can apply to European projects) and finding land for a building are possible, as long as there is the will to do it. That shows how, with the municipality and the state working together and involving those who have built and maintained the collection, the matter can be resolved successfully.

A report recently surfaced that Ogre Technical School had fallen out with the municipal council over a street repair…

I answered this question indirectly at the start of our conversation – this year the municipality was stripped of 7 million euros and we do not have the money to repair a street for a state technical school. If we had that money, we would consider it. Let me add that the best cooperation comes when respect is mutual.

There has recently been talk of a possible review of the municipal reform. Is everything calm in the large Ogre Municipality? From time to time Ikšķile is mentioned, which would like to “live” separately.

The administrative-territorial reform has been completed, and so have the municipal elections, in which everyone came forward with their own offer. Those who had nothing to offer lost the elections. Ogre and Ikšķile cannot be separated. Why? Ogre grew out of Ikšķile. If we look at the map, the territory of the former Ikšķile Municipality encloses the town of Ogre; that situation once prevented the municipality and the town from developing as we wished. Now we can. A joint municipality is the most correct arrangement there can be. Ikšķile's territory is right next door, and Ikšķile residents receive many services in Ogre – children travel to the gymnasium, they use Ogre library, we have a larger house of culture and so on. The argument about being close to Riga is mistaken, because Salaspils lies between us and Riga. Ikšķile is not part of greater Riga, because it does not share a direct border with Riga… Once again we can return to the question of cooperation. It is very important.

Photographs by Vitolds Gabrāns and zemeunvalsts.lv