Latvia coalition holds as pro-Putin force tops seats

The centre-right coalition of Prime Minister Laimdota Straujuma handily won Latvia’s elections amid alarm over a resurgent Russia, while a Kremlin-allied party popular with the country’s sizeable Russian minority narrowly topped the seat count.

The leftist Harmony party, allied with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party, took 25 seats in the 100-member parliament, but with no coalition partners it is set to remain in the opposition, partial official results from 1,000 of 1,054 polling stations showed on Sunday.

Three parties in Straujuma’s centre-right governing coalition took a 61-seat majority, which could rise to 68 with a fourth party possibly joining in.

Harmony has actually lost ground, having won 31 seats in the 2011 elections.

But with Europe now in its worst standoff with Russia since the Cold War, Saturday’s election was overshadowed by fears that Moscow could attempt to destabilize its Soviet-era Baltic backyard.

Russia’s annexation of Crimea and meddling in eastern Ukraine spooked voters in this Nato and eurozone member of just two million people where many retain vivid memories of the Soviet occupation that ended only a quarter-century ago.Straujuma has been quick to call for more Nato troops and extra air patrols in the vulnerable region, and the alliance has responded with increased troop rotations and exercises.‘People wanted change but they started to be afraid in the context of Ukraine and Russia,’ Arnis Kaktins from the SKDS pollsters said of Sunday’s results.