This time, Latvia’s parliamentary elections were fairly calm, delivering a pro-European result without any unexpected Russian influence operations or major scandals. Still, there is a lot to worry about.
At its last meeting in June 2026, the Board of the Baltic Centre for Investigative Journalism Re:Baltica discussed the recurring attacks against the organisation on social media concerning Re:Baltica’s past collaboration with Leonid Ragozin.
Security, immigration, and the Istanbul Convention were the main topics of Latvia’s parliamentary election this year. While the first concerns almost everyone amid an increasingly fragile geopolitical situation, the other two were largely pushed to the forefront by politicians, including through unfounded fearmongering and outright disinformation. Re:Baltica analyses the main narratives and methods political parties used in the battle for voters before the October 3rd elections.
The criminal, Russophobic Baltic states are on the verge of collapse, and their governments care only about Ukraine – messages like these, along with similar ones, have been circulated for nearly two years by the Belarus-based propagandist channel Grani Svobodi (Borders of Freedom).
They used to work together in one way or another. Since the collapse of "Harmony" – once the leading party for Latvia's Russian-speaking voters – four political groups are now competing for what's left of its supporters in the upcoming parliamentary elections in October. One is the faded old brand trying to reinvent itself, and the former allies who split off to build careers of their own.
For years, the Baltic states dismissed the Kremlin's increasingly outlandish claims – from implying they were allowing Ukrainian drones to strike Russia from their territory to allegations they were preparing to deport their native Russian speakers – as propaganda. Note, debunk, move on.
In May, the Baltics experienced a perfect storm of events capable of fuelling public anxiety. There were repeated emergency alerts about Ukrainian drones entering airspace, some of them hitting an empty oil depot in Latvian town close to the Russian border and one being shot down by NATO air force in Estonia. Vilnius, including the government, was ordered to go to shelters. Latvia experienced power outages.
In the history of Latvian banking, February has often been a month of fateful turns.
From the dismissive view that “it's a family matter” to more than 10,000 people gathering in Dome Square to declare that “violence against women is not our value.” Efforts to combat domestic violence in Latvia have at times been pushed by Europe and at others by grassroots activism. Yet some of the country's laws have been written in blood.