A government panel in Latvia will spend three years preparing a report estimating the "material and moral damage" inflicted by the Soviet KGB on the Baltic nation and its people, Latvian media reported.
The government has approved funding for the commission, which will begin its work now and is estimated to release its report after May 31, 2018, a spokesman for Latvia's President Raimonds Vējonis said, Delfi news portal reported Sunday.
The Latvian parliament had earlier ruled that KGB archives in the Baltic nation may be published only after they have been studied by researchers, and no earlier than May 31, 2018, the report said.
Latvia and the two other Baltic nations, Estonia and Lithuania, were annexed by the Soviet Union during World War II and regained independence with the Soviet collapse, nearly five decades later.
The countries, which are now members of NATO and the European Union, have significant ethnic Russian populations. After Moscow annexed Crimea from Ukraine last year under the guise of protecting the peninsula's Russians speakers, the Baltic nations have feared that Russia may resume its claims on their territories.
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