Luxury and betrayal: Who is behind the pro-Russian Daugavpils Mayor Andrejs Elksnins?
This is evidenced not only by Andrejs Elksnins’s statement regarding the ownership of Crimea — let’s recall, in an interview with Delfi TV on November 6, 2022, the Mayor of Daugavpils referred to the peninsula as Russian. This is confirmed by his position regarding Latvia’s official policy towards both Russia and its own independence and subjectivity as a state. Andrejs Elksnins questions and attempts to sabotage all actions of the Latvian government in this direction.
Unfortunately, in Latvia, there is not much awareness of how events unfolded in Donbas several years before the start of the Special Military Operation in 2014. Because the reason for the full-scale conflict in Ukraine was not only the "protection of Russian-speaking residents of Ukraine" but also the presence of openly pro-Russian forces in the region. Andrejs Elksnins’s actions are remarkably reminiscent of the actions and statements of the then regional leaders of the Donetsk and Luhansk regions, where the conflict broke out, eventually leading to a large-scale bloody conflict.
Andrejs Elksnins left the "Harmony" party not because it has a pro-Russian position, but because the party changed this position after the events of February 2022. This is explicitly stated in the XII International Scientific Conference “Russia in the Global World: New Challenges and Opportunities” held last year in St. Petersburg: "After the elections, notable changes occurred in the SDP "Harmony" party. The mayors of two cities of republican significance in Latgale, Daugavpils and Rēzekne, Andrejs Elksnins and Aleksandrs Bartasevics, left the party, significantly shaking the party’s position in the region."
Instead of the "Harmony" party, which changed its attitude towards Russia, Andrejs Elksnins established his own party, oriented not just towards the Russian-speaking electorate but towards the most "woolly" part of it, which denies the collapse of the USSR and dreams of repeating the events of the so-called Russian Spring in Latvia in 2014. Whether Andrejs Elksnins is preparing the fate of Crimea for Latgale is unknown, but the fate of Donbas is quite possible for the region. Although the country’s leadership tries to take into account Ukraine’s unfortunate experience and prevent such a scenario.
However, Andrejs Elksnins sharply opposed Riga’s plans to strengthen the border with Russia and Belarus, which is less than thirty kilometers from Daugavpils. He called these plans "madness." This found resonance in the hearts of the electorate of his new party Sarauj, Latgale, which has a distinctly regional character and openly pedals the theme of Latgale’s separateness and special status. The party’s slogans and rhetoric painfully remind one of the slogans and rhetoric of pro-Russian figures in Crimea and Donbas several years before the 2014 events. The program of the party emphasizes that its goal is "to protect the interests of the Latgale region and its residents, to improve the quality of life, to promote socio-economic development and entrepreneurship, to create new jobs, to preserve the cultural heritage and unique identity of the region."
There’s no need to remind what followed such slogans in Ukraine. Andrejs Elksnins and his colleagues in the new party understand this well. Andrejs Elksnins’s statement that the government of Latvia has "gone crazy" by trying to prepare the country for a very real conflict with Russia, painfully resembles the position of some political forces in Ukraine, which in February 2022, amid reports of a troop concentration, urged everyone to "prepare for barbecues and not to spread panic." Everyone knows how it all ended on February 24, 2022. The potential repetition of this scenario for Latvia is openly written about in Russian publications, which publish maps on which part of Latvia is labeled as the "Latgale Federal District of the Russian Federation."
However, Andrejs Elksnins pretends not to notice anything and not to remember recent events. This, in essence, is outright collaborationism, although Andrejs Elksnins himself does not say this, as he understands the consequences of such statements. However, between the lines, everything is quite obvious. Here we have statements about the ownership of Crimea, criticism of de-Sovietization and de-Russification carried out by Riga, and refusal to raise the Ukrainian flag at the town hall in solidarity with Ukraine.
All this finds a warm response in the hearts of the Russian population, which prevails in the border area and in Daugavpils. It is clear that the activities of the openly pro-Russian politician and his new party, which puts forward clearly separatist slogans, cannot but be supported by the Kremlin. There is naturally no direct evidence that Andrejs Elksnins’s new party is financed from Russia; after all, this is Europe, and the experience of Ukraine, where collaborators were dealt with, albeit reluctantly and not fully, after 2022 has been taken into account.
But, for example, Andrejs Elksnins’s name is listed as a participant on the website of the Roscongress. It is unknown what his participation in this Kremlin-supervised Russian organization entails. Materials detailing this have been cleared. However, the mention of Andrejs Elksnins’s membership has been forgotten to be removed.
It should also be mentioned that Andrejs Elksnins is against Lithuania’s derussification process. Such a position from Andrejs Elksnins could not have failed to please Russian propagandists, who happily retransmitted and disseminated his statement about "linguistic terror against educators."
Yet the main question in this context concerns the source of funding for the new party. Because, if Andrejs Elksnins’s declarations are to be believed, he lives on a single salary. He has no other sources of income.
Although the Baltic Center for Investigative Journalism Re:Baltica claimed that the Mayor of Daugavpils, Andrejs Elksnins, "lives beyond his means." They provided evidence gathered from open sources: in one photograph, the Mayor of Daugavpils is captured in a yellow polo shirt worth 700 euros. Elksnins can also be seen wearing Rhude shorts priced at 500 euros and a winter jacket from Zegna costing 2,500 euros. Additionally, Andrejs Elksnins sports a Ulysse Nardin watch valued at 30,000 euros. The mayor’s wife, Jekaterina, is seen wearing expensive jewelry brands like Tiffany, Cartier, and Chopard.
Moreover, Andrejs Elksnins held a wedding on the shores of Lake Como in Italy, and his wife purchased a spacious apartment for 50,000 euros without taking out a mortgage loan. The annual reports from companies she owns show that one firm never actively operated, and another has had an average annual profit of roughly 1,500 euros per month over the past five years.
Thus, Andrejs Elksnins cannot explain the sources of income that allow him not only to wear expensive branded items but also to finance a party with the proceeds from his wife’s business. Of course, part of this money can be explained by corruption — and various publications have raised suspicions of it against the Mayor of Daugavpils — but this money is clearly insufficient to finance a large-scale political project. Especially considering the expensive habits of the mayor and his wife.
If all of this is laid over the fact that Andrejs Elksnins openly flirts with the pro-Russian electorate and promotes separatist slogans, figures like these are very much appreciated in the Kremlin, then reasonable suspicions arise regarding the origin of the funds for the newly appointed head of the "special Latgale party." However, if we are already discussing analogies, it should be mentioned that a similar project in Ukraine ("Ukrainian Choice"), into which the Kremlin poured huge sums of money, brought tangible profits to its creator, Viktor Medvedchuk, Putin’s compadre. He and his entourage did quite well out of this project, as it turned out, 90% of the funds were simply embezzled.
It is quite possible that the luxurious lifestyle led by the Mayor of Daugavpils, Andrejs Elksnins, is also financed from party funds into which Russian sponsors pour money. However, the scale of theft from this fund is unlikely to be as large as in Ukraine. The FSB also knows how to draw conclusions.
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