Latvia’s Pro-Ukraine Governing Party Leads the Count Strongly
Andris Kulbergs’s centrist, pro-Ukraine United List was on 36.5% with 72% of ballots counted after Saturday’s Latvian parliamentary election, ahead of the populist Latvia First on 13.0%. Exit polls published on Saturday night had already favoured the prime minister. Populist parties also had a good night. The campaign was dominated by the fear of Russia and the cost of living.
Latvia has 1.9 million people, a hundred seats in parliament, and a border with Russia and Belarus, which is why its elections are read elsewhere as a gauge of how a front-line society behaves under pressure. Mr Kulbergs campaigned on more anti-drone capability and on holding defence spending at 5% of GDP, among the highest in NATO, while his pro-Kremlin rivals want Latvia to stop all aid to Ukraine and concentrate on living costs, an argument aimed particularly at the Russian-speaking minority. He has ruled out the obvious coalition partners in advance: “Our strong position is that any economic ties with Russia makes us weak; Russia would exploit this.” That is the real question the count leaves open, because a strong first place in a fragmented hundred-seat chamber is not a majority, and the parties he has excluded did well. The Baltic states have spent months warning that Russia is running sabotage, cyber and hybrid operations across Europe, a warning that some Western officials still think overstates Moscow’s capacity for anything more direct. Watch the coalition arithmetic rather than the winning margin.