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.