After Russia invaded Ukraine, more than 160,000 Ukrainians fled their home country and came in the Baltic nations of Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia. Over fifty thousand refugees came to Latvia, including doctors.
The Russian language program in Latvian schools is gradually being phased out, according to government policy. In the midst of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, it’s a part of an attempt to shrink Moscow’s power. But some educators and security experts say the move might be helping the Kremlin’s propagandists.
One was a theater director, another worked at an oil refinery, but both have fled repression in Belarus after joining mass protests against an August election widely seen as rigged and are now refugees in neighboring Latvia