Latvian election shadowed by division among ethnic Russians

HELSINKI (AP) — Latvians will be voting on Saturday in a general election that has been substantially influenced by neighboring Russia’s attack on Ukraine, political disintegration among the Baltic country’s sizable ethnic-Russian minority as well as issues relating to the economy, including high energy costs.

Polls show that Prime Minister Krisjanis Karins’ New Unity party, which heads the current four-party center-right minority coalition, is likely to emerge as the top vote-getter, with a projected 13% to 20% of ballots cast by the 1.5 million eligible voters.

The election will likely be followed by a lengthy period of negotiation and coalition-building, but analysts say there is a strong chance that Karins — who steered the Baltic nation of 1.9 million through the COVID-19 crisis among other things — will still be prime minister at the end of it.

“In this very unstable situation we’re in now, people simply see him as a trustworthy figure,” said Pauls Raudseps, a columnist at the Latvian news magazine IR.

The election is likely to be the death knell for the opposition Harmony party, which until now has been favored by Latvia's ethnic-Russian minority, which makes up over 25% of the population.

The Moscow-friendly party traditionally served as an umbrella party for most of Latvia’s Russian-speaking voters, including Belarusians and Ukrainians. In the last election in 2018, it was the largest single party, with almost 20% of the vote but was excluded by other parties from entering the government.

However, the party's immediate and staunch opposition to the Russian invasion of Ukraine caused many who still back Russian President Vladimir Putin to desert it. Meanwhile, those opposed to the war have tended to move toward Latvia's mainstream parties, all of whom are...