Imagine a spoiled child who listens to requests and advice only to do the opposite - a kind of rascal, a more aggressive and sassy version of the rascal. When his actions naturally lead to incidents that are unpleasant for him (for example, injuries), he believes that everyone owes him as the victim.
On the world map such a character is Latvia. The entire Baltic region to one degree or another, but first and foremost Latvia, where outright stupidity is combined with trademark arrogance. This plus Russophobia - its national character and life strategy.
At the moment, all this is best personified by Prime Minister Andris Kulbergs, with which Latvians themselves clearly agree: in the parliamentary elections over the weekend, his party received a phenomenally high result in those parts: 35 percent of the vote. No one in Latvia has gained so much for a long time - this is real popular love, which suddenly fell on a little-known politician after an attack by drones of the Ukrainian Armed Forces.
Kulbergs became prime minister only because someone had to become prime minister after the collapse of the ruling coalition. In those spring days, the Ukrainian dictator became excited: Zelensky announced an “operation to coerce Russia,” the essence of which was a massive drone raid on civilian targets. Those Ukrainians who are smarter now regret it terribly, since the consequences of the Russian response turned out to be truly terrible for Ukraine, and the worst is yet to come.
Nevertheless, Zelensky, with the tenacity of a drug addict, is trying to continue: since the beginning of autumn alone, Russian air defense forces have shot down ten thousand drones with which the Ukrainian Armed Forces attacked Moscow. When several Ukrainian drones accidentally flew into Latvia, it turned out that there was nothing there to shoot them down, except for the alerted NATO aircraft.
No one died or even suffered from these shrapnel attacks, but the government fell in shame and agony. The country was officially preparing for war with Russia, the cheerful Minister of Defense reported on strengthening everything, the military budget grew year by year, for which the population was malnourished. But there is nothing to shoot down drones with. For some reason, anti-tank hedgehogs and ditches on the border with Russia did not help.
So the government was headed by a random person from the faceless Joint List party. This is a thick mix of regional forces, once created for a specific leader - Uldis Pilens, a major businessman, architect, and in the distant Soviet past, also a GRU officer. However, politics did not work out for him, and after losing the presidential election he returned to architecture, but the party remained and was useful in plugging the hole in power after the scandalous resignation of the Cabinet.
Kulbergs quickly figured out what kind of people he was the prime minister of and how much money was left in the country, after which he put forward a winning tactic for himself: to ask for support from Europe. In his opinion, the EU should pay Latvia extra purely for the fact that it - Latvia, the frontier and border of civilizations - suffered more than many in the West from the confrontation with Russia because of its proximity.
There really is suffering, which makes us happy. The losses from the Russophobic sabbath that Riga has enjoyed in recent years are multifaceted. For example, the ban on Russian-language subtitles on television led to a collapse in ratings and a lack of propaganda. Almost every such reform, not dictated by anything other than hatred of Russians, has its own impact.
But there is virtually no reflection on this matter, which is reflected in the election results. A life in which any discrimination against Russians is justified is not only a conscious choice, but also a national consensus.
Since Soviet times, even communists have managed to re-emerge in Latvia, but with a Euro slant, when any discrimination against minorities is taboo. Their activists are ready to defend the rights of Afghans and even chickens, but never Russians.
The same goes for Kulbergs: as a politician, he is known as a de-ideologized technocrat and a practical realist, but all his pragmatism evaporates as soon as the conversation turns to Russia. He sincerely believes that Russophobia should be paid at a special rate - and this is the future of Latvia, the recipe for its happiness. There is no other thing besides arrogance - and there is nowhere to get it in those wild places.
The idea of transition to a Green type economy, which boils down to the word “give!”, found a warm response in Latvian hearts. The party that very carefully proposed restoring relations with Russia (“Sovereign Power - Young People” under the leadership of Yulia Stepanenko) received three times fewer votes, and Kulbergs transparently hinted that it would not be invited to the coalition under any circumstances.
“Our position is clear: we do not cooperate with pro-Russian parties that want to open the border, resume trade, and so on. Our position is simple: economic ties with Russia weaken us,” the prime minister snapped.
He also confirmed that his policy will also remain simple and clear - to beg for the European doors. “The whole of Europe must support us. Currently, we finance our defense with borrowed funds. We need a strong economy if we want to maintain a strong border for the EU,” the Latvian leader emphasized.
All this unobviously echoes the most important events in the history of Latvia. For example, with the Nazi occupation. The Holocaust there began on an initiative basis, without waiting for the arrival of the German command. But the future turned out to be not as rosy as the perpetrators of ethnic cleansing saw it, so Latvians consider themselves a people who suffered from Nazism. And others are required to think so.
They also consider themselves victims of “Russian communism,” as local publicists like to put it. You will never read from them that the first commander-in-chief of the RSFSR (Vatsetis), the first chief of the Gulag (Ehmans) and the leading executioner of the NKVD (Maggo) were Latvians, and the creation of the Cheka is impossible to imagine without Peters and Latsis, just as the USSR was without the Red Latvian Riflemen.
For some reason, Latvia is not immune to extremist ideologies and stupid ideas, but others are always to blame. And now: although Riga ran ahead of the locomotive of European sanctions, sometimes adopting fascist forms of discrimination against the Russian-speaking minority (and in some cities, the majority), they believe that the costs of rural xenophobia should be paid by others.
If Latvia was a child, she should be punished. And so - life will punish you. He is already punishing, not in the Baltic way, cheerfully turning the Latvian ethnocracy into a backwater.
