The Russian parliament is set to grant new powers to President Putin to deploy troops abroad “in the event of the arrest, detention or the criminal prosecution” of Russian citizens and compatriots.

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Whilst Putin does not necessarily need parliamentary approval to send troops into its neighbouring states, the new law signals a continued willingness to manufacture pretexts for invasion using identity-based disinformation.

For the Baltic states which have large Russian populations, and Latvia in particular, this is of great concern.

The purported “protection” of so-called compatriots has never been an altruistic mission for the Kremlin. Instead, it is a mechanism to expand Russia’s boundaries.

Indeed, during the reigns of Peter the Great and his successors, the unification of Orthodox peoples under the Russian Orthodox Church served as both a spiritual and civilisational rationalisation for imperial expansion westward and southward.

Today, Putin and many within Russia’s military leadership frame expansionism as both a strategic imperative and a civilisational mission. Their rhetoric implies that populations with ethnic or linguistic ties to Russia belong under Moscow’s authority.

By this logic, states with significant Russian-speaking populations are illegitimate in the eyes of the Kremlin. This narrative has already caused the largest war in Europe since 1945 and has brought the entire continent to the brink.

The role of civilisational disinformation was evident in........

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