01/05/2026
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In May 2005, a world leader stood up in the middle of a Kremlin ceremony and walked out. She did it in front of Vladimir Putin.
Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga had been invited to Moscow's Victory Day celebration marking 60 years since the Soviet defeat of N**i Germany. For Latvia, that victory had a second chapter. The Soviet army that liberated Europe from one occupation then imposed another, deporting tens of thousands of Latvians to Siberia. Vīķe-Freiberga herself had been one of them as a child.
She arrived in Moscow, she made her objections known publicly before the ceremony began, and when the celebration honoured the Soviet military without acknowledging what it had done to Baltic nations, she left. She had been Latvia's president since 1999, the first woman to lead any post-Soviet state, elected unanimously by parliament after a career as one of Canada's most prominent cognitive scientists. She spoke six languages and used every one of them to press Latvia's case for NATO membership, which was granted in 2004.
The child the Soviet army deported grew up to stand in its honour guard, look it in the eye and refuse.
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