Jānis Urbanovičs is a Latvian politician and writer. He has been a constituent of the Saeima since 1994. From 2005–2010 Urbanovičs was head of the National Harmony Party and from 2010–2014 and again since 2019 the leader of Harmony. The party is considered a pro-Russia party. Urbanovičs is wedded to Rita Urbanoviča, with whom he has two daughters and a son. His mother language is Latvian, but he also speaks Russian.
Harmony is closely linked with Latvia’s ethnic Russian minority, which makes up about 25% of the population. Until 2017, it had a formal partnership agreement with Vladimir Putin’s United Russia party. Harmony’s connections to Russia have historically stopped it from being included in governing coalitions, as other Latvian parties have declined to work with it due to these links.
Founded on 9 July 2005, Harmony Centre appeared from For Human Rights in a United Latvia, an electoral alliance created by the National Harmony Party, the Socialist Party and Equal Rights, that partially disbanded in 2003. Equal Rights expressed the interests of the Russian minority and the Russian language in Latvia. The National Harmony Party, New Centre and the Daugavpils City Party joined at the foundation, the Socialist Party in December 2005 and the Social Democratic Party in January 2009. The alliance sought to consolidate the Latvian centre-left and encourage Latvian-Russian amity.
In its nine years of presence, Harmony Centre became the most famous political force in the Latvian Parliament but remained in opposition. Various standings on Latvia’s close relations with United Russia.
Urbanovičs condemned the Revolution of Dignity on what he acknowledged were the “West’s efforts to undermine Russian plans for a Eurasian Customs Union” and called the Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation “a desperate effort on the part of Russia to control economic and military imbalance in the communication zone of Southeastern Europe between NATO and Russia”, noting the precedent of Abrene County as a partial justification.
He has stated he fully supports Ukrainian territorial integrity, “including Crimea”, but did not want to investigate who was to blame for what occurred in Ukraine and called for an international investigation. He also condemned EU sanctions against Russia as ineffective and damaging to the Latvian economy.
