RUSSIA: As the EU ponders relations with its new neighbours, Dan McLaughlin in Moscow reports on tensions between people in the Baltic states and Russians living there.
The men who attacked Ms Natalya Zablotskaya, a Lithuanian immigration officer checking passports on the Moscow-Kaliningrad train, left a message written in her blood on the carriage wall: "Lithuania for the Russians!" It was a brutal expression of tensions that are not obvious on the peaceful streets of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, former Soviet states that joined the European Union this month, bringing large Russian minorities into the bloc.
But grievances are there, and they are growing.
In Latvia, 300,000 ethnic Russians are left stateless because they refuse or are unable to take a citizenship test on the Latvian language, history and culture. A similar situation holds to the north, in Estonia. Russians in both countries denounce the laws as crude discrimination.
On May 1st, as the EU flag was being raised across a mostly jubilant Baltic region, 20,000 Russians marched through Riga, Latvia's capital, to protest at a law that forces public schools to teach most of their classes in Latvian, even if most of their students only speak Russian.
And in Kaliningrad - the Kremlin's impoverished Baltic enclave, now isolated from "mainland' Russia by EU members - Russians have to get a special transit visa to cross Lithuania when they want to visit friends and relatives in the rest of their country.
Ms Zablotskaya (24) was set upon as her train, the Amber Express, rolled across Lithuania on its way to Kaliningrad. She was beaten unconscious and her wrist was slashed, but was stable in hospital yesterday.
On a recent journey on the Amber Express, frustration rather than fury prevailed among travellers from Kaliningrad. They feel increasingly cut off from friends and relatives in Russia and the Baltic states, and fear abandonment by Moscow as their former Soviet neighbours look West for their future.
"Everyone's scared in Kaliningrad, no one knows what's going to happen," said Ms Viktoria Smirnova. "I have lots of friends in Lithuania, but can't just pop over to see them now. The documentation means I have to wait at least a day, longer at weekends. Our relationship has changed so much." For non-Russians in the Baltic republics, most of the changes are for the better.
Under almost 50 years of Moscow rule, hundreds of thousands of people were deported or killed by the Red Army and secret police. Native languages and customs were suppressed, and Russians poured into the region, taking most of the top jobs.
After regaining independence from the crumbling Soviet Union in 1991, a jubilant Latvia refused to make Russian an official language. Riga said it wanted to right the wrongs of occupation; Moscow called it crude revenge.
Almost a third of Latvia's residents are Russian, and Riga is a bilingual city. But the harmony fractures in the country's schoolrooms, which the government call a bastion of national identity and Moscow call a breeding ground for racism.
"The Russians have truly woken up," said one activist, Mr Yuri Petropavlovski, at a recent congress of Russian schools that denounced Latvia's new language law. "The schools reform was the final straw . . . Russians have rediscovered their dignity and justice and freedom."
Ms Vaira Vike-Freiberga, Latvia's combative president, told a Russian newspaper yesterday she had no sympathy for Russians' complaints or the reluctance of many of them to become Latvian citizens.
Referring to her country's Soviet history as one of "illegal, cruel, totalitarian foreign occupation", she said lots of Russians had hoped EU accession would falter and Latvia would fall back under Moscow's influence.
"That won't happen. They need to accept that it is an independent country and become Latvians - of Russian descent, but Latvians.
"If they want to be Russians, let them go to Russia; and if they want to become Latvians, then we would welcome that."