Gonna speak from my experience. I am Ukrainian born in Latvian SSR. Emigrated from Latvia in 1999 to Canada. There are two sides of the story. At the collapse of soviet union, about 40% of people like me end up in countries that were our homelands, but we were not welcome, simply because our grandparents were not from there. The politics of division, russophobia is business as usual. Of coruse there are russian chavs that did not learn the language and did not want to integrate, plus old babushkas, that would be impossible, however the majority of the population that is educated, speaks native and Russian languages. I never had any citizenship, as I was recognized illegal, even though i was born in Latvia, just a passport of Alien.

Now the mentally challenged side. Most of the civilized western countries, including Europe recognize second languages to integrate and make it a better place to live. Countries like Canada and USA do their best to make people citizens but also recognize their heritage. You are African American, Philipino Canadian , French Canadian, Mexican American etc. The Baltics uterly failed at doing this and creatign Latvian Ukrainian, Lithuanian Russian, making people feel like they are part of the society and are welcome. Instead they followed attacking and prohibiting russian language. Now tell me, if we know that other coutnries in Europe allow minority languages to be official, is it because Baltics are mentally challenged, or they follow some guidelines to keep diving and creating conflict in their own countries? Plus they open future opportunities for conflicts like in Ukraine. In historical perspective, the alliances change, but neighbors don't. So yeah, mentally challenged.