Vronsky was up early to capitalize on the events of the previous night. Leaving Brezhneva to first report back to Moscow and then maintain a steady stream of Twitter and other social media feeds to fearful Russian speakers desperate for news, he met the organizing committee of the demonstration and a new leader was soon appointed. He then sat down with the RNZS commander and his subordinates to plan the course of the demonstration from start to finish.
The killings were having exactly the desired effect. As the news spread by word of mouth, by Twitter, Facebook and other social media—Brezhneva no doubt doing her part—so the anger mounted among ethnic Russians.
From early in the morning large numbers of Russian speakers walked, biked, bused or traveled by the ubiquitous trams to the designated assembly area for the demonstration, watched by Vronsky from a café where he sat drinking endless cups of coffee. Others came by bus and car, particularly from Daugavpils and other Russian majority areas in the east, beside the border with Russia. Some Russian speakers were Latvian citizens, but most were the so-called “non-citizens,” denied Latvian citizenship because they refused to take the Latvian “citizenship test” on a point of principle.
While there had remained a deeply discontented minority ever since the final withdrawal of Soviet troops in 1994, most “non-citizens” accepted the status quo and were happy with their “Western” style of life in Latvia. But now, and ever since the invasion of Crimea and Ukraine, they were exposed to a constant stream of Russian TV broadcasts and social media highlighting the discrimination, the lack of employment opportunities and the laws against speaking Russian. Every day they were told how much better things would be under the paternal protection of the President.
And in recent months, following a highly provocative petition organized by Latvian nationalists calling for ethnic Russians to be put into concentration camps, there had been a more direct message broadcast by the entertaining and thoroughly believable Kremlin TV, telling people to get onto the streets and demonstrate for their civic rights as ethnic Russians. And, if necessary, to be prepared to fight for those rights.
As ethnic Russians flooded into Riga that May morning, doubling if not tripling the population of the city, so the rumors swirled and began to take on a life of their own. On Vronsky’s instruction, Brezhneva put out more feeds on social media calling for Russia, the Motherland, to protect her children, all her children.
She repeated the President’s words from three years ago and they were re-tweeted and favorited, again and again: 95% of the Russian population think that Russia should protect the interests of Russians.
And then the message changed: The Latvians will never change. Russia must protect us. We call upon the President for protection.
Meanwhile Morland and his team, dressed in nondescript civilian clothes and guided by Marina Krauja, took up covert positions in pairs, high up in the art deco Europa Royale Hotel on Krišjāņa Barona Street, directly on the planned route of the demonstration. From their positions they watched the hundreds of riot police lining the route, with more police held in groups in reserve. In the city center, shops and offices closed, windows were boarded up and most headed home before the demonstration began.
The march began in the early afternoon. Urged on by RNZS members, identified by their march organizers’ armbands, tens of thousands of demonstrators started to move toward the center of the old city. Deep, rhythmic chants of “Rossiya, Rossiya” filled the air. Banners with photographs of the President inscribed in Russian and English to ensure the watching world understood—Россия слава, Rossiya slava, Russia Glory—bobbed above the heads of the crowd as it moved in a mass phalanx. On the flanks, young men, faces covered in masks and with rucksacks full of stones, taunted the police who stood solid in full riot gear with shields raised and batons drawn. As they passed a liquor store a brick was hurled through the window. With a roar a mass of wildly yelling looters, urged on by the RNZS, grabbed bottles of vodka and devoured the contents.
The police formed a base line, fired baton guns into the rioters and then charged. Several went down and were grabbed by snatch squads, and bundled into the backs of police vans. Soon the steady, purposeful mass had become an enraged animal; vengeful, vicious, ever more intoxicated and looking for blood. More shops were looted, cars overturned and set on fire. As smoke billowed across the city, international TV crews, alerted to the impending carnage by Vronsky, rushed to get close-up shots of the crowd surging forward against the lines of police, hurling Molotov cocktails, which exploded with a “whoosh” of flame against the lines of riot shields. Here and there the lines were penetrated and policemen went down, desperately beating their protective clothes to extinguish the flames.
And in the heart of it all was Vronsky, directing the RNZS militia leadership, who passed on his instructions to their lieutenants within the crowd by mobile phone.
As the crowds neared the Vermanes Gardens, the usually peaceful green square with its outdoor theater at the heart of the elegant city, Morland and his team were able to observe, film and record from their vantage points above Krišjāņa Barona Street, as the crowd surged beneath them. Krauja was pointing out the leaders to Morland.
“Tom, that guy surrounded by RNZS organizers; medium height, early thirties, close-cropped dark hair, black zip-fronted fleece jacket over a white T-shirt. Got him?”
“Seen,” Tom replied.
“He seems to be in charge and he’s new. He’s the Russian we’ve been watching. We’re pretty certain he met Petrov and Zadonov the night they were killed, but we lost him in the Old Town. We reckon he’s been sent by Moscow to stir things up.”
Morland pressed the shutter on his Canon digital SLR camera with its zoom lense. There, face filling the lens and frozen in his viewfinder, was the dark-haired Russian that Krauja had pointed out to him.
“Got you… you bastard,” muttered Morland to himself.
Then, as the head of the crowd filled the Vermanes Gardens, there was a guttural roar as the mass of marchers were charged by a counter-demonstration of hundreds of nationalists from behind the university buildings.
The police lines were overwhelmed, caught between two masses of humanity hell-bent on killing each other. Nationalists hurled Molotov cocktails and bricks at the ethnic Russians, who fought back with bricks, glass shards from smashed windows and batons hidden under jackets. More cars burned and running fights flowed up and down side streets, as the pent-up anger and bitterness of the ethnic Russians exploded.
Morland looked back at the leaders and, through his binoculars, saw the Russian speak into his mobile phone; brief, to the point. He was giving an order.
A moment later, from the roof of the university, came three deliberate, aimed shots: the unmistakable sound of a sniper. Morland realized he had heard that sound before on the range only a week earlier, when the Latvians had given his team a demonstration of Russian infantry small arms. In fact, he had been allowed to fire it himself and its high-pitched crack was distinctive, as was the weapon itself, the special sniper rifle developed for the Spetsnaz: the VSS, also called the Vintorez or “thread cutter.” It fired a subsonic, 9 millimeter, armor-piercing cartridge, tipped with tungsten, and was capable of penetrating a 6 millimeter high-density steel plate at 100 meters.