PSCRP-BESA Reports No 23 (October 30, 2026)
by Kiryl Kascian
The 2026 Saeima election again offered Latvia’s Russophone electorate several distinct political choices. Sovereign Power/Young Latvians (SV/AJ) received 11.71% of the national vote, while Latvia First (LPV) secured 13.08%. For Stability! fell to 1.997%, and the renewed Harmony Centre got only 0.82%. LTV’s post-election analysis identified LPV and SV/AJ as the two main choices among Russian-speaking voters.
For more than a decade, the minority segment of the Latvian political system was dominated by Harmony, an integrationist social-democratic political force that appealed beyond ethnic lines and sought to establish itself as the country’s major center-left party. This dominance ended in the 2022 parliamentary election, when Harmony failed to cross the electoral threshold. Among the parties with predominantly or overwhelmingly minority electorates, For Stability! received 6.80%, Harmony 4.81%, the Latvian Russian Union 3.63%, and Sovereign Power 3.24%. The result left a competitive field in which no party inherited Harmony’s former position.
LPV also competed for Russophone voters in 2022, appealing in particular to those more concerned with economic issues and receptive to the Trump-like political style of its leader, Ainārs Šlesers. The Progressives remained an option for a smaller segment whose preferences were tied more closely to socioeconomic issues and the party’s broader political platform. However, neither LPV nor the Progressives depended primarily on a Russian-speaking electorate.
SV/AJ combined language issues with criticism of Latvia’s support for Ukraine and a wider protest appeal. For Stability! occupied similar political ground but relied more heavily on anti-system and social-populist rhetoric, entering the campaign weakened by the departure of its leader, Aleksejs Rosļikovs, to Minsk. The Progressives continued to attract a smaller segment of minority voters whose choices were shaped more by socioeconomic issues and the party’s broader platform. LPV, meanwhile, became a credible option for a substantial part of the Russophone electorate while still relying primarily on ethnic Latvian support.
Sovereign Power/Young Latvians
SV/AJ’s 11.71% cannot be read simply as an improvement on Sovereign Power’s result in 2022. Sovereign Power contested this election together with Young Latvians, while politicians affiliated with the Latvian Russian Union also ran on the alliance’s lists. The official candidate information shows, among others, Latvian Russian Union member Andrejs Pagors heading the SV/AJ list in Zemgale and Jūlija Sohina running in Riga. Both were elected to the Saeima.
Young Latvians added another element to this electoral collaboration. Established in 2023, the populist and Eurosceptic party helped SV/AJ reach ethnic Latvian protest voters and project a more visibly cross-ethnic profile. This also allowed the alliance to move beyond the limits of the relatively narrow political niches from which its constituent actors had emerged.
Its political offer combined an appeal to the Russophone protest electorate with broader dissatisfaction over developments in Latvian politics, the economy, and social policy, supplemented by conservative rhetoric and an emphasis on traditional values. The appeal could therefore reach voters dissatisfied with the political establishment regardless of their native language. Some accounts suggest that around six in ten SV/AJ supporters (and four in ten LPV supporters) placed primary responsibility for Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine on Ukraine or the West.
As noted earlier, Sovereign Power received 3.24% in 2022 and the Latvian Russian Union 3.63%, which amounts to 6.87% combined. This figure should not be treated as a hypothetical result for a common list, since electoral choices depend on the political context, candidates, and the available alternatives. It does, however, show that the 2026 collaboration expanded its electoral base considerably beyond the combined 2022 support. Part of this additional support likely came from former Harmony voters and, in particular, from the electorate that had supported For Stability! in 2022, although the exact scale of these shifts can hardly be traced.
SV/AJ’s success can therefore be attributed to a combination of effective social-media campaigning, the personal appeal of its leading candidates, and the ability to bring previously separate political actors into one electoral project. It also managed to mobilize protest voters partly across ethnic lines.
For Stability! and its leader Rosļikovs
For Stability!’s decline was closely connected with the increasingly personalized character of the party around Aleksejs Rosļikovs. The party had been the strongest predominantly Russophone electoral force in 2022. By 2026, its parliamentary group had disintegrated, several MPs had left, and Rosļikovs was conducting much of his political activity from Belarus. LTV described his departure to Minsk as a development that had destabilized For Stability! and intensified competition for Russophone voters.
Rosļikovs had received court permission for a three-day trip to Switzerland in March but did not return to Latvia afterward. He subsequently appeared in Minsk, where he participated remotely in proceedings in a criminal case concerning alleged incitement of ethnic hatred. A Riga court changed the security measure to detention and issued a warrant for his arrest. Rosļikovs simultaneously held a press conference in Minsk, describing the case as persecution for defending the Russian language and supporting good relations with Russia and Belarus. Latvian public media reported both his statements and the court decision.
Belarusian state media also gave Rosļikovs a platform for the same message. The state newspaper Belarus Today presented him under the headline that politicians supporting partnership with Belarus were being “silenced” in Latvia and highlighted his description of Belarus as a center of “common sense.”
His activities in Minsk were largely compatible with the party’s previous ideological profile. Its 2026 program already called for renewed economic cooperation with Russia and Belarus, reconsideration of sanctions, and what it described as Latvian neutrality. At the same time, Rosļikovs further personalized this message. He presented himself as the party’s main political asset, as a politician persecuted for his views, and increasingly as someone whose return to Latvia depended on the election.
In July, the party announced that Rosļikovs would return to Latvia on October 4, immediately after the election. By September, he was describing electoral support as his “only ticket home” and arguing that a parliamentary mandate would change his position in the criminal proceedings. After For Stability! received 1.997%, failed to enter parliament, and lost state financing, Rosļikovs did not return. On October 5, party chair Svetlana Čulkova announced that he no longer planned to return to Latvia. She subsequently presented his return as conditional on voters being prepared to support and “defend” him.
This sequence suggests that For Stability!’s result reflected both its political offer and the conduct of its leader. The party retained, and in some respects sharpened, the positions that had distinguished it in 2022, while remaining strongly centered on Rosļikovs. Yet conducting much of the campaign from Belarus, facing detention upon return, and increasingly presenting the election as a test of support for his own political and legal position was unlikely to strengthen trust among his former electorate, particularly when comparable political offers were readily available.
Harmony Centre
Harmony Centre retained elements of its earlier political offer while maintaining a clear position on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Its 2026 program condemned Russian aggression and supported Ukrainian sovereignty and territorial integrity. Yet the party received only 0.82%.
Jānis Urbanovičs, the party’s long-time leader, acknowledged after the election that it was no longer in demand, including among many of its own members. He suggested that politicians who had emerged from it might need to start again from a “clean slate.” In his assessment, the name that had once helped the party had by 2026 become an electoral burden. The result therefore reflected both the erosion of its former support and the declining value of the political label under which much of Latvia’s minority electorate had been organized for more than a decade.
Latvia First and Latgalian context
LPV appealed to Russophone voters without relying primarily on them. As noted above, around four in ten of its supporters placed the main responsibility for Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine on Ukraine or the West. Yet its appeal to these voters was considerably broader than foreign policy. Šlesers campaigned on promises to restore transit, reduce taxes, and ease conditions for business, while his image as a politician associated with economic development and practical action also remained an important part of the party’s appeal.
The party also drew on politicians with established support among Russophone voters. Its 2026 lists included former Harmony politicians, among them former Rēzekne mayor Aleksandrs Bartaševičs, as well as figures previously associated with For Stability!.
The Latgalian context is particularly interesting. Latgale is Latvia’s most ethnically diverse and economically disadvantaged region. Average gross monthly earnings there in the second quarter of 2026 stood at €1,365, the lowest among Latvia’s regions and 34% below the Riga region. Latgale was also the only electoral region where LPV finished first. The party received 29.07% of the vote, compared with 18.86% for the United List and 17.27% for SV/AJ, and secured five of the region’s twelve seats.
The scale of the change is especially visible against the 2022 results. LPV had then received only 6.53% in Latgale, compared with 18.56% for For Stability!, 11.47% for Harmony, 7.22% for the Latvian Russian Union, and 4.97% for Sovereign Power. Its 2026 result therefore went well beyond its national growth. Strong local candidates, particularly Bartaševičs and Olga Petkeviča, also mattered in a region where personal and municipal political networks remain important.
Thus, LPV’s result in Latgale rested on a combination of socioeconomic promises, Šlesers’s personal appeal, and substantial support among Russophone voters, while ethnic Latvians still formed the core of the party’s electorate nationwide.
Beyond the figures
Lower participation accompanied these shifts. National turnout fell from 59.41% in 2022 to 51.79% in 2026. In Latgale, it declined from 57.14% to 47.17%, while in the Riga electoral district it fell from 52.78% to 46.43%. The Riga figure should be treated with some caution because votes cast abroad are assigned to this district. Still, weaker participation in both Riga and Latgale suggests that a sizeable share of the minority electorate stayed home.
At the same time, LPV’s performance shows that part of the Russophone vote moved toward a party rooted mainly in the ethnic Latvian electorate but increasingly responsive to minority interests.
Dr. Kiryl Kascian is Senior Researcher at the Centre for Communication Influences and Propaganda Research, Faculty of Communication of Vilnius University, Lithuania