Russia planning to make sarcastic use of international courts against Baltics

Despite its own appalling human rights record, Russia – possibly aided by sidekick aggressor country Belarus – will likely base its legal play-acting on its fever-dream insistence that Russian-speakers in the Baltic states face terrible discrimination and, even more fantastically, that a mass deportation of such persons is being planned, along the lines of its Soviet predecessors, according to Re:Baltica's report. The intention appears to be to cause as much inconvenience as possible and air Russia's solipsistic greivances in an international forum in the hope that any weak-minded onlookers might forget that it continues to commit atrocity after atrocity in Ukraine and actually believe that it gives a fig about international law and accountability. Re:Baltica doesn't put it quite that way, but it's what it basically amounts to and is broadly in line with recent hints to the same effect dropped by the Constitution Protection Bureau (SAB), one of Latvia's security services, as previously reported. SAB dubbed the likely Russian tactic "lawfare", seeing it as a type of hybrid warfare measure. A more earthy synonym would be old-fashioned "sh*t stirring", which many might argue is the principal – and perhaps only – skill of the Russian Foreign Ministry these days. If you'd like to read the full report, you will find it (in Latvian) here.