Moscow - Latvia votes in a referendum today on whether to make it easier for ethnic Russians, who constitute 45 per cent of its population, to become full citizens with equal rights to travel abroad, vote and receive social welfare.
The EU and the US have both warned the small former Soviet Republic that it risks international isolation unless greater efforts are made to integrate the Russian minority. But with memories of the 50-year Soviet occupation still painfully fresh, many voters regard ethnic Russians as colonists.