Voting against Putin in Riga
On Sunday, I stood in line for four hours to vote in an election that had already been decided. I knew who was going to win, everyone in line knew who was going to win, but we were there anyway. I am a Russian journalist in exile in the Latvian capital Riga. Spoiling my ballot was my way, however futile, to reject Vladmir Putin’s regime.
Putin’s supposed landslide victory with 87% of the vote has been dismissed in the West. But standing in that line, I was reminded of the power of Russian disinformation, of the hold that Putin’s conspiracy theories have on voters.
Sunday was the day of the Navalny-inspired “Noon Against Putin” protest, in which Russian voters stood together in muted solidarity at the appointed hour to show their disapproval. Reports in the press suggested that thousands queued up, perhaps offering some flickering hope for the future of Russian democracy. The people in those queues probably have some great stories to tell. I, on the other hand, was surrounded by mostly elderly Putin supporters. One older gentleman in the queue gave an impromptu speech about Western Europe being on the brink of a religious war because “Muslims have overrun France and Germany.” His speech echoed Putin’s contempt for European decadence, though Putin would have made the politically expedient argument that conservative Christians and Muslims are united in their distaste for a Europe that has departed from the “family values” it once held dear.
A woman I recognized as a pro-Kremlin blogger introduced herself to people in line as a journalist. She was there, she said, to ask questions about the election, but she mostly spoke about the suppression of freedom of speech in Latvia. Many of the Russians in the queue, most of them Latvian citizens too, nodded their heads in agreement.