Nils UÅ¡akovs

Nils Ušakovs (Russian Нил Валерьевич Ушаков / Nile Valeryevich Ushakov, born June 8, 1976 in Riga, Latvian SSR) is a Latvian journalist and politician. He is a member of the Russian minority in Latvia, acting mayor of Riga and Chairman and top candidate of the party alliance Saskaņas Centrs.

Life

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

Journalism

Ušakovs worked for the Baltic Division of the Russian TV station NTV and the Latvian television. Later he was editor of the newspaper Respublika ( Республика ) and Telegraph ( Телеграф ) and the Russian-language TV channel TV5 Riga and the news agency ITAR- TASS. After 2006, Ušakovs devoted entirely to the policy.

Policy

2005 Ušakovs came at the invitation of Jānis Urbanovičs into the Tautas Saskaņas partija. When was the party alliance Saskaņas Centrs in November of the same year, Ušakovs was elected chairman. He was from 2006 deputy in the 9th Saeima. According to the Latvian local elections in June 2009, he was elected by the coalition of Saskaņas Centrs and Latvijas Pirma partija / Latvijas Cels as Chairman of the Riga City Council and thus to the Mayor of Riga. He is the first ethnic Russians in this office since the restoration of Latvia's independence in 1991. Since he argues for a rapprochement with Russia, the expansion of freight transport in the Riga port and the expansion of tourism, because Riga has been hit particularly hard by the financial crisis from 2007.

In December 2009 was Ušakovs center of a scandal, as an extract from minutes of a meeting of the City Council was published. Ušakovs had used very rude Russian swear words.

In the elections to the 11th Saeima Ušakovs was with Urbanovčs candidate of Saskaņas Centrs for the post of prime minister.

Private life

Ušakovs is married to his second wife Jelena Sucharevja. His hobbies include jogging and cycling. In May 2011, he suffered a collapse at the Riga Marathon and was at times in a Berlin hospital in a coma. In addition to his native Russian Ušakovs is also fluent in Latvian and English. In addition, it also offers German, Swedish and Danish.