The elections to the Russian State Duma will not bring changes in the relations between Latvia and the neighboring country, at the same time Latvia must remain vigilant in anticipation of the Russian presidential elections in 2024, Evija Djatkoviča, a researcher at the Latvian Foreign Policy Institute, told LETA.
She pointed out that other important issues are currently on the agenda of Russia, such as Belarus, Afghanistan, the Bundestag elections in Germany and also the elections in France, which will take place later.
The researcher admitted that Russian rhetoric against Latvia could intensify from time to time, touching on such topics as the ban on retransmission of Russian mass media, the rights of Russian speakers, Latvia’s strong position on Russia in the European Union (EU). According to Djatkovich, it cannot be ruled out that Russia could update the inclusion of Latvia and possibly Lithuania and Estonia in the list of countries unfriendly to the neighboring country, however, this, according to the researcher, is mainly intended for Russia’s internal “audience consumption”.
Speaking about the upcoming Russian presidential elections in 2024 and the need for Latvia to remain vigilant, Djatkoviča explained that aggressive foreign policy adventures are one of the methods of the declining superpower’s behavior. She emphasized that an external enemy was also well placed to foster public support for the existing regime, especially when other objective reasons to support the system were not obvious.
Regarding the conduct of the elections, the researcher pointed out that opinion polls during the pre-election period, including those that could not be considered independent, showed a popularity of “United Russia” between 30 and 26% between June and September. Djatkoviča pointed out that according to the official results of the election, the party won 49.8% of the vote, which is in significant contradiction to the public mood during the pre-election period.
The researcher also noted that it was the results of electronic voting, which are more difficult to see and control externally, including from observers, that became a sensational source of success for “United Russia”. In Moscow, for example, nearly 2 million people out of the approximately 56 million who voted in Russia as a whole voted electronically.
Dyatkovich explained that the election results were not published for a long time and that the results of the electronic voting differed sharply from the paper voters’ choices, which signaled worse success for United Russia. Under normal circumstances, e-voting should increase the dominance of alternative parties, as it can be assumed that e-voting is a younger person with a higher income, a better education, interested in change.
The researcher noted that Moscow and St. Petersburg are quite alternative-minded cities, so it is unlikely that the results of a fair e-vote in especially large cities could weigh the situation in favor of “United Russia”. She concluded that the election results could be quite significantly affected. Experts say that the real result of “United Russia” in these elections does not exceed 40% of the vote.
“The victory of United Russia does not come as a surprise, but it was somewhat surprising the extent of possible falsification of electronic voting. It was precisely because of electronic voting that United Russia won almost 90% of the seats in the single-member constituency parliament,” Djatkovich said.
She admitted that a certain surprise is the relatively high result of the Communist Party. This is due to the success of the “smart vote” that Alexei Navalny’s team managed to take away the votes for “United Russia” and vote for any other competing player in parliament. On the other hand, the researcher stressed, the low result of the party “Ābols”, ie 1.3%, was also a surprise, taking into account the known expectations regarding the protest vote in favor of the strength of the relatively liberal flank.
Asked what could change in Russia after the election, Dyatkovich pointed out that nothing. She quoted and agreed with Mikhail Khodorkovsky, head of the Open Russia Foundation, that a change of power or change cannot be expected in Russia through elections. The researcher stressed that the 2021 election or voting, as it is called, showed that voters can vote according to their interests, but the votes will be counted according to the interests of the ruling elite, regardless of the “smart” or other type of voting approach.
“In my opinion, there is no serious pull of the street protest movement at the moment. This is to some extent due to the inability to mobilize such a movement. The opposition has lost its leaders, be they in prison or abroad.
According to her, in the future in Russia we can expect a gradual groping and even tightening of the “screws” for alternative-minded people – organizations, movements, individuals, waiting for the presidential election in 2024. Djatkovich noted that we will definitely see electronic voting as well, because it proved itself well in these elections from the official Moscow perspective.
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