emerged in the 1990s as an organization whose stated goal was the overthrow of the current unsatisfactory government and the establishment of a "Latvian Latvia". In 1995, three former members of the group "Rība's Defenders" - Valdis Raups, Aivars Vīksniņš and then-68-year-old Vilis Liniņš - joined up with martial artist Juris Rečs to reconstitute Pērkonkrusts. "Rība's Defenders" was an unregistered splinter group from the self-proclaimed successor organization of the pre-WWII Aizsargi, founded by Jānis Rība. Members of the group were assigned code names, swore loyalty oaths, and senior members wore masks to initiate recruits. The organization was explicitly militaristic and considered itself a "Latvian fighting unit" pursuing a "holy liberation struggle." The ideology of the group was primarily characterized by ethnic and racial nationalism, anti-semitism, anti-communism, anti-liberalism and opposed to free markets. Among the goals of Pērkonkrusts were a Latvia where the "Latvian would be the lord and master in his Fatherland... not in those of Latvian-speaking cosmopolitan bastards," and "racial purity of the Latvian people." Pērkonkrusts has opposed "Jew neo-Communists... half-Jews and their allies... enemy number one of the Latvian people." Members of the reconstituted Pērkonkrusts tried three times to bomb the Monument to the Liberators of Soviet Latvia and Riga from the German Fascist Invaders. In one of the most serious incidents on the night of 5 June 1997, two of the members were killed in the explosion. In 2000, most of the leaders of the current Pērkonkrusts were arrested and tried. The group ceased organised activities or was banned around 2006. One of the previous leaders of the organization Igors Šiškins has tried to re-activate Pērkonkrusts again. He has claimed to represent Pērkonkrusts at various events, such as the marking of Remembrance day of the Latvian legionnaires and Soviet Victory Day (9 May) in Riga. On 9 May 2007, Šiškins was arrested for wearing forbidden symbols in public. Šiškins was similarly detained for displaying forbidden symbols on 9 May 2009. In 2006 a similar organization, the Gustavs Celmiņš' Center (Gustava Celmiņa centrs), which used the same symbols as Pērkonkrusts and also claimed to promote Dievturība, was registered with Šiškins becoming one of its leaders until the organization was dissolved by the Riga Regional Court in 2014. In its relations with Latvia, the Foreign Ministry of the Russian Federation at times brings up the history of the Pērkonkrusts movement as evidence of present-day Latvia's "fascist" heritage. In 2016,