Whenever I watch on TV Vladimir Putin meeting another post- Soviet politician seeking his support, I cannot help recalling a wonderful Soviet times painting, Ilyich over Ukraine’s Map. In this picture Lenin is so very lofty, the map is so very big, and Ukraine so small: it has no place to hide from us...
Recently Putin had a meeting in Kremlin with renowned Latvian politician, leader of the parliament faction of the For Human Rights in the United Latvia bloc Janis Jurkans. For a Russian or Ukrainian television viewer or reader learning about this meeting it is nothing but just another protocol event with the participation of the Russian president. For the small Latvia it is an event of an altogether different scale. When Russian president two weeks before the parliamentary elections in this country meets a leader of an electoral bloc, incidentally, noted for not only Jurkans’ but the last leader of Latvian Communists Alfreds Rubiks’ participation in it, for the Latvian community this is a direct indication to with whom Russia sympathizes, wants to talk to, and recommends Russian-speaking Latvian citizens to vote for. There is no such thing as accidents in politics, and it is quite clear that Mr. Jurkans came to Moscow two weeks before the elections not without reason and getting Putin’s audience is not the same thing as visiting Duma or the Bolshoi theater.
Similar election techniques are used in Moscow not for the first time. In fact, all this started from the Russian elections when the popular prime minister met Yedinstvo [Unity] and SPS [the Right Union] leaders, helping them to win over the electorate. In this case Putin’s indirect participation in the election campaign was completely justified: at least it was among the conditions for Presidential Administration’s control over the new Duma. However, it seems that later the Kremlin decided that the president’s popularity should be used in the whole post-Soviet space. Putin took an active part in the Ukrainian parliamentary elections, meeting not only head of the Presidential Administration of Ukraine Volodymyr Lytvyn who came to Moscow on an invitation from Aleksandr Voloshin but also Gennady Ziuganov’s guest, leader of Ukrainian Communists Petro Symonenko. So what? Russia’s darlings, first, do not hurry to lobby its interests and second, are uncompromising enemies: some build tents, other send OMON emergency plats to them.
Now there are Latvian elections. With Ukraine it was at least supporting big electoral blocs. Jurkans’s faction can hardly count on securing seats in the new Latvian government and serious influence on the events in the Latvian political arena. Even Latvian politicians and businesspeople interested in Russia, Latvians as well as Russians, support other political forces. However, by meeting Jurkans Putin did himself more harm than good demonstrating that Moscow in its relationship with a neighboring country soon to become member of NATO and the EU would bet on the ethnic factor.
Naturally, Russian president did not strive for this. He watches TV, reads monitoring, and is aware of his extreme popularity and ability to change the intentions of even foreign electors by simply shaking somebody’s hand. The trouble is that other countries watch different TV channels, read different newspapers, and draw different conclusions from the Russian political protocol.
