Former Riga Mayor Points to Importance of Relations With Russia, Belarus for Latvia Fri 23rd July 2021 | 11:00 PM RIGA (UrduPoint News / Sputnik - 23rd July, 2021) Relations with Russia and Belarus will always be important to Latvia as the countries share borders and there are close ties between their peoples, Nils UÅ¡akovs, a member of European Parliament and former mayor of the Latvian capital, told Sputnik on Friday. "We need to look at the map here is Latvia and here is our common border with Russia, our big neighbor. We can see how economic relations form. This cooperation will always be important. History shows that the governing forces in different countries change, but the nations remain. We have relations with the Russian people. So relations with Moscow and Minsk will always be important for us," UÅ¡akovs said.