Latvia's migration office told 841 Russian citizens to leave by 13 October 2025

Letters from Latvia's Office of Citizenship and Migration Affairs (PMLP) asked 841 Russian citizens to leave the country by 13 October 2025. Some of those written to had noticed nothing until their pension stopped, the head of the PMLP, Maira Roze, said on Latvian Television's De Facto program, broadcast on 7 September 2025.

Their permanent residence permits had expired, according to PMLP data compiled in July 2025. When residence permits were canceled, the PMLP said, the people concerned stopped receiving pensions and other benefits. By the time Latvian Public Media (LSM) reported on 14 October 2025, 358 of the 841 had submitted residence-permit applications.

Latvia had amended its Immigration Law in autumn 2022 so that Russian citizens who had previously held Latvian citizenship or non-citizen status had to certify Latvian at A2 level and re-apply in order to keep long-term residence. Amendments adopted in 2024 covered a further group, which LSM described as including Russian military pensioners and family members who had obtained their status through a different procedure, and set 30 June 2025 as the deadline to sit the state language test and apply for EU long-term resident status. LSM put that group at 4,678 on 2 September 2025 and at 4,650 in its report of 14 October 2025; the 841 were part of it.

PMLP spokesperson Madara Puke said that after 13 October those people no longer had grounds to stay in Latvia. Over the following two months, she said, the office would update its data on who had left, applied or died, and the information would then be passed to the State Border Guard, after which an exit order would be issued to anyone still in the country. Lieutenant Colonel Gatis Ruza, head of the Riga service of the State Border Guard, said removals had not begun: "today we have not started to do anything yet".

The language requirement had already been challenged and upheld. On an application brought by Russian citizens holding permanent residence permits, the Constitutional Court announced on 15 February 2024 that the A2 language requirement conforms to the Constitution and is proportionate.

On the wider program, LSM reported on 2 September 2025 that a deportation procedure had been initiated against 85 people, that some of those decisions were canceled and four people had died, and that the final number to be deported was 62: 32 left of their own accord, 10 were forcibly deported, 7 were in hiding or had gone to an unknown location, 4 contested the expulsion decision and were given the opportunity to apply for a residence permit, and 1 was in prison. Six cases were in active litigation and seven had concluded. Of the more than 25,000 people originally covered, nearly 15,000 received EU permanent resident permits.

Earlier, on 18 January 2024, LSM reported that removal proceedings had begun against 985 Russian citizens who had not taken the exam or applied for another permit, with forced-expulsion decisions taken in two cases at that point.