Our meeting spot is a café on the edge of the Old Town of Riga, Latvia’s capital. Katya arrives punctually, takes a look at the crowded tables and spins on her heels: "Too many listeners." She finds what she’s looking for a couple of streets further along: an empty café.

The mistrustful Katya, an IT expert whose name has been changed for this story, is part of the Russian-speaking minority in Latvia. Since the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, many of them have been filled with fear. They feel like their fellow citizens suspect them of harboring pro-Kremlin sympathies and of being Trojan horses for Russian President Vladimir Putin.

In the café, Katya tells the story of what happened to her cousin. She pulls out a letter from the Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs stating that Igor Popov, a Russian citizen, must "immediately leave" the country "for the protection of national security." This order, the letter continues, comes as a result of his – otherwise unclarified – "contacts with services of the Russian Federation and his loyalist stance on the military activities" of the Russian troops.

"A short time later, two members of the secret service were standing in front of his door," says Katya. "They gave him just one hour to pack and then he was taken to a camp near the city of Rēzekne, where others were also waiting to be deported. The next day, he was taken to the crossing point at Terehova and sent across to Russia." Since then, Popov, a 52-year-old welder who has a wife and two children, has lived in Putin’s empire.

Katya says she had never seen her relative take part in political activism. Perhaps, she suspects, he ended up on the secret service’s blacklist because he was a former Soviet recruit.

Russian speakers make up 30 percent of the Latvian population, for a total significantly in excess of half a million people. Around 50,000 of them have Russian citizenship. Most are descendants of the Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians that Soviet dictator Josef Stalin resettled in Latvia from other parts of the U.S.S.R. At the same time, Stalin had tens of thousands of residents of the Baltic republic taken away and locked into Siberian camps. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Latvia declared 700,000 residents to be "non-citizens" with no right to vote. The reason: The non-citizens or their ancestors were not "real" Latvians. From that point on, they were stateless.

In 2022, the government in Riga tightened the laws further and started taking steps to firmly establish the primacy of the Latvian language, culture and history. Russian citizens in Latvia who are unwilling to learn Latvian, as well as members of the Russian minority whom the government suspects of being potential political agitators now face sanctions ranging from exclusion from civil service jobs and the loss of their residency permits to deportation to Russia.

A Mandatory Language Test

The government in Riga is doing its best to eliminate everything from the public eye that is even remotely reminiscent of Russia. In August 2022, the Soviet victory memorial – commemorating victory over Nazi Germany in the "Great Patriotic War" – was torn down, an affront to the many who had gathered there every year on May 9 to remember their fallen ancestors. "Your time has run out," the Latvian defense minister said in a message to Russian speakers in the country.

The state broadcaster Rossiya 1 and other Russian television channels have been blocked in Latvia for some time now. And in 2022, 166 teachers were fired because their Latvian wasn’t good enough. Since September, instruction in the first, fourth and seventh grades may only take place in Latvian, with the other grade levels to follow.

Half of Russian passport holders in Latvia have by now received a letter from the state. Those interested in extending their residency permits must take a test proving their basic facility with the Latvian language and must declare their loyalty to the fundamental values of Latvia, a European Union member state. That includes answering questions like: "Do you condemn the Russian invasion of Ukraine?" Of those who have recently taken the language test, more than 60 percent failed in their first attempt.

Deportations from Latvia, such as that which befell Katya’s cousin, remain the exception, to be sure, but unease among the country’s Russian-speaking population is significant. More than 3,500 residency permits are thought to have been annulled since December, which also results in the loss of access to bank accounts, social welfare payments and pensions.

Never Before Lived in Russia

The majority of those affected are elderly people who only became Russian citizens in the last two decades because it gave them access to an additional pension from Russia – heavily touted by the Kremlin – at the relatively young age of 55. Others opted for Russia because they finally wanted to hold citizenship somewhere. But most of these people have never actually lived in Russia.

The fact that this country, its population of just 1.9 million people protected by membership in both NATO and the EU, has ramped up the pressure on its Russian minority has not gone unnoticed in Moscow. In December, Russian President Vladimir Putin angrily warned that such "piggish" treatment of his compatriots would not bring happiness to Latvia.

Does that mean that the Baltic country faces a scenario such as that which befell the Donbas region of Ukraine or the Crimean Peninsula in 2014, when Kremlin troops marched in on the pretext of needing to protect the Russian-speaking population?

"I estimate the share of those with Russian backgrounds who would be willing to help a Kremlin invasion at around 10 percent," says Jānis Sārts, director of the NATO Strategic Communications Center of Excellence in Latvia. In the ongoing NATO military exercise Steadfast Defender, which simulates a Russian attack, Western forces have been practicing a worst-case scenario since February 26. But the exercise is not linked to an acute threat. "It’s just a drill and doesn’t mean that war is going to break out this year or next."

"Putin's Nightingale"

"To understand what is currently happening in this country, you only have to look around in my neighborhood," says Inguna Potetinova. The anthropologist lives in the dreary quarter of Ķengarags on the outskirts of Riga. The majority of the 45,000 people who live in the residential high-rises here are Russian speakers.

Potetinova, who has Latvian roots, says that those in Latvia who stand up for the Russian speakers are insulted as "Putin’s nightingale" or as a "Rushist," a portmanteau of "Russian” and "fascist." Ever since she conducted research into the minority and published her results under the title "They Don’t Give a Damn About Us," she too has come under suspicion of disloyalty to her country. Her Russian husband was told while out shopping that he should pack his suitcase and board a train to Russia.

"It’s a polarized atmosphere; it’s alarming," Potetinova says on a walk through the bleak streets of her neighborhood. Her research, she says, has revealed that: "For decades, the word 'Russian' in Latvia hasn't just referred to an ethnic group, rather it stands for a collective trauma, for suffering and loss. Russian speakers are seen as part of the legacy of the Soviet occupiers."

Three hours by train from Riga, in the southeastern corner of Latvia, lies Daugavpils, the country’s second largest city. Here, not far from the borders to Lithuania and Belarus, in one of the poorest regions in Europe, close to 80 percent of the population speaks Russian.

In 2016, the BBC threw the spotlight on Daugavpils in the form of its fictional documentary "World War Three – Inside the War Room." In the film, Russian-speaking insurgents pull the EU flag down from its mast, chant "Rossiya" and prompt Western military strategists to consider how they might react to a Russian nuclear strike.

The speculative BBC film about a possible third world war was opportune for elements of the Russian state media. TV Zvezda, the propaganda broadcaster of the Russian Defense Ministry, exulted that it presented the image of a NATO that wasn’t necessarily in a position to defend itself. Residents of Daugavpils, though, weren’t quite as pleased about the headlines.

But what do they really think, the Russian speakers of Daugavpils?

The museum guide in the Center of Russian Culture, where 10 employees oversee a politically innocuous exhibition, says that the atmosphere in the city is basically harmonious – but adds that "these events" in Ukraine imperil the tranquility. That matches well with a headline on the liberal internet portal "Chayka" immediately after the Russian invasion of Ukraine: In the Latvian east, the website wrote, Putin’s tanks would likely be welcomed with bread and salt.

Daugavpils is gripped by an atmosphere of distrust. When the subject of Latvian-Russian relations comes up in restaurants, voices go quiet as soon as a waitress approaches. There are reports about hostility on the streets and of families in which the pro-Putin mother no longer speaks with her daughter, who has no problem with the Latvian test for Russian speakers.

The language test, says Olga Petkeviča, is the greatest source of stress for many. "Some people come in who have failed the test four times already," she says. She works out of a tiny room in the city hall, barricaded behind boxes full of forms. She says that a black market has long since developed for certificates declaring the holder to be unfit for learning a foreign language.

Standing in Line

The 37-year-old used to be a part-time model and a journalist. Now, she is a mother of four who is just trying to start a European political career. Some in Daugavpils see her as the guardian angel of Russian pensioners, while others suspect she is an agent for the Kremlin. She is running for a seat in the European Parliament in elections set to take place in early June, and she plans to speak up once she gets there. "I want to make it clear that Russian speakers can be completely normal EU citizens," she says, "and that they aren’t responsible for the war in Ukraine."

Petkeviča, who speaks Latvian, Russian and English, insists that she isn’t fighting "for 'the Russians,’ but for residents of my country." In front of her is a pile of application forms for residency permits. Many of the Russian speakers fighting to stay in the country are former female factory workers and are overwhelmed by the paperwork, she says.

On a Wednesday shortly before 1 p.m., the elderly begin gathering outside Petkeviča’s office. Dressed in Soviet-style clothing – most of the women wearing knitted beanies and the men in slider caps with earflaps – they stand in a long line in the hopes of getting a bit of advice. They are holding papers in plastic folders – letters in Latvian officialese that have made them uneasy.