Zilupe: A Chronicle

Armed men in unmarked uniforms occupy Zilupe; no shots fired

Several hundred armed men in unmarked winter uniforms crossed into eastern Latvia before dawn on Sunday and took control of this border town, seizing the municipal offices, the railway station and the bridge over the Zilupe river without firing a shot.

Latvian State Border Guard personnel at the Terehova crossing were disarmed and released within the hour. Two guards described a column of roughly a dozen unmarked trucks and four wheeled armoured vehicles arriving at 04:40, with men who spoke Russian, wore no insignia, carried no identity documents, and gave instructions in a manner one guard described as unhurried and rehearsed.

By midday, checkpoints stood on the A12 highway two kilometres west of the town and on the rail line at Grebņeva. Traffic was being allowed out of Zilupe and not in. Journalists were turned back at the western checkpoint, where a man in a balaclava said the town was under the protection of "local self-defence" and that reporters could enter once the situation stabilised.

The Zilupe Civic Committee issued a statement from the occupied municipal building declaring itself the town's provisional authority and requesting that Russia guarantee residents' safety. Prokhorenko, its chairman, appeared briefly at a window and told a small crowd that no one would be harmed.

Latvia's government convened at 06:00 and requested consultations under Article 4 of the North Atlantic Treaty. Prime Minister Kārlis Vītols called the incursion an armed violation of Latvian territory and ordered the Land Forces Infantry Brigade to establish positions west of Ludza. He instructed commanders not to advance further east.

"There is a very deliberate design here," Vītols told reporters in Riga. "They have arrived without flags so that no one has to admit they arrived. They have not fired so that no one has to answer for firing. And they have chosen the one place on this alliance's eastern edge where the answer would be hardest to organise."

Russia's Defence Ministry denied any involvement. Col. Andrei Loskutov said the ministry had no units in Latvian territory and that reports of Russian forces were "a Baltic fantasy with a long history." Barsukova, at the Foreign Ministry, said Russia would regard the use of force against Zilupe's residents as an attack on people it was obliged to protect.

The North Atlantic Council met in emergency session Sunday afternoon and issued a statement after four hours expressing full solidarity with Latvia, condemning the violation of its sovereignty, and calling for immediate withdrawal. It announced no deployment.

Three officials from separate delegations, speaking on condition of anonymity, described the same argument recurring across the session: that no member had been attacked, that no shots had been fired, that the men in Zilupe were of unestablished nationality, and that moving alliance troops into a town where the local population had not asked for them risked producing the first casualty rather than preventing it.

One official summarised the emerging position bluntly. "Let the town work it out. If we drive an armoured column into Zilupe on Tuesday, we own whatever happens Wednesday."

Estonia, Lithuania and Poland pressed for the immediate forward deployment of the multinational battlegroups already in the Baltics. The proposal did not carry.

Zilupe is 230 kilometres from Riga, 300 from the Lithuanian border and more than 900 from the nearest Norwegian port. A single highway and a single rail line connect it westward. Both now run through a checkpoint.

Zilupe votes on status under armed supervision; Moscow recognises result

A self-appointed committee in the occupied Latvian town of Zilupe announced Sunday that residents had voted overwhelmingly to seek incorporation into the Russian Federation, in a ballot conducted over a single day at three polling stations staffed by armed men and monitored by observers whose credentials the committee declined to describe.

The committee reported 3,140 ballots cast and a result of 94.1 percent in favour. Latvia's Central Election Commission noted that the 2026 voter register for the Zilupe parish territory contains 1,187 eligible residents. The commission called the exercise a fabrication and said it would not be recorded in any state register.

Russia's president signed a decree recognising the result on Monday morning and announced that a "border assistance mission" would be formalised. Within hours, additional columns crossed at Terehova and moved south toward Pasiene and Lauderi and west along the A12, halting at a new checkpoint eight kilometres short of Ludza. The occupied zone now extends roughly 30 kilometres north to south and 20 kilometres inland.

The vehicles that crossed on Monday carried Russian markings. The pretence of unattributed forces, maintained for four weeks, was abandoned without comment.

Residents who left Zilupe in the days before the ballot described a town under a soft and total administration. Pensions were being paid in roubles at the culture house. Two Latvian-language teachers had been driven to the Ludza checkpoint and told not to return. Mobile service carried Russian networks. Nobody had been shot.

"They were polite," said Marta Kalniņa, 61, who left on 11 February with her sister and now stays in Rēzekne. "That is the part I cannot explain to my nephew in Riga. They were polite, and there was nothing anyone could do, and both of those things were true at the same time."

Ludza's mayor said 380 residents had registered as displaced in the municipality since mid-January, and that a larger number had gone directly to relatives further west.

The North Atlantic Council met again Monday and again produced a statement without a deployment. It declared the referendum null, rejected any change to Latvia's borders, and warned that any use of force against Latvian citizens would carry severe consequences. Asked at what point the alliance would move, Secretary General Petra Halvorsen said the Council's position was that the crisis remained one in which restraint served Latvia's interests.

Grundulis, the Latvian defence minister, said Latvia had stopped waiting on the Council alone.

"Two hundred men walked across our border in January and nothing was done, because nothing had been done to us in a way that fits the paperwork," he said. "Somebody in Moscow understood our procedures better than we did. They found the seam and they put their thumb in it."

Latvian brigade positions now sit on the western outskirts of Ludza, 20 kilometres from the forward Russian checkpoint. Commanders on both sides have established a deconfliction line by telephone. It has held for four weeks.

Two border guards, one civilian killed near Pasiene; Baltic and Polish units move to Rēzekne

Two Latvian border guards and a civilian farmer were shot dead Thursday evening at a forest track south of Pasiene, ending nine weeks in which the occupation of eastern Latgale had produced no fatalities and triggering the first movement of foreign troops into the region.

The Latvian State Border Guard said a four-person patrol on the Latvian-controlled side of the deconfliction line encountered a Russian dismounted element roughly 900 metres inside territory Riga does not consider part of the occupied zone. The service said its patrol was fired on without warning. Sgt. Jānis Ozols, 34, and Cpl. Edvīns Rutks, 27, were killed. A third guard was wounded and evacuated. Uldis Sviklis, 58, who farmed land adjoining the track, was found dead 200 metres away.

Russia's Defence Ministry said its personnel had returned fire after being engaged and blamed the incident on a Latvian reconnaissance patrol operating in a protected area. It expressed regret for the civilian death and proposed a joint investigation. Riga rejected the proposal.

Within eighteen hours, Estonian, Lithuanian and Polish units crossed into Latvia under national orders and established positions in and around Rēzekne, 60 kilometres west of Zilupe. Estonia moved a reinforced infantry battalion. Lithuania moved a mechanised battalion and a light artillery battery. Poland moved a mechanised brigade element with air defence, the largest single deployment.

The three governments said in a joint statement that they were acting under bilateral defence arrangements with Latvia and Article 51 of the UN Charter, and that the deployment was not conducted under alliance command. Polish Defence Minister Marek Zawadzki said the decision had not required anyone's permission.

"We asked for a collective answer for nine weeks," Zawadzki said. "We have stopped asking. What is happening in Latgale will not stop at Latgale, and every government in this alliance knows it, including the ones that will not say it."

The North Atlantic Council met Friday. It condemned the killings, called them a grave escalation, and again did not authorise a deployment. Two delegations argued that the national movements into Rēzekne were destabilising and had been undertaken without consultation. Halvorsen, the Secretary General, said the alliance's commitments remained intact and declined to characterise the disagreement.

A senior official from a western European delegation, speaking anonymously, described the difficulty in operational terms rather than political ones. Rēzekne is served by one usable highway and one rail line running east from Riga. The nearest deep-water resupply runs through ports within range of Russian systems in Kaliningrad and the Leningrad district. Any force sent to Latgale, the official said, would sit at the far end of a corridor 200 kilometres long, within artillery range of the border along much of its length, and would be difficult to reinforce and harder to withdraw.

"Everyone can read the map," the official said. "That is the entire problem. The map is why it was chosen."

Latvia declared a state of emergency in Ludza, Rēzekne and Krāslava municipalities and began a partial mobilisation of the National Guard. Vītols, the prime minister, said the country's forces would not initiate an offensive but would defend every position west of the current line.

Russian formations at Sebezh and Ostrov were reported moving toward the border overnight.

Latvia invokes Article 5 after four days of fighting; nine states send forces

Latvia invoked Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty on Wednesday, the second such invocation in the alliance's history, after four days of sustained fighting along the A12 highway east of Ludza in which Latvian and allied units were pushed back nine kilometres and both sides used artillery for the first time.

The fighting began on 10 April when Russian mechanised forces advanced past the deconfliction line toward Ludza under a rolling barrage. Latvian brigade elements and the Lithuanian mechanised battalion held the town's eastern approaches for two days before withdrawing to prepared positions near Nirza. Latvia's Defence Ministry reported 61 dead and 190 wounded among its own forces, and said allied casualties would be announced by the contributing states.

Ludza fell on 12 April. Russian units did not continue west, halting on a line running from Nirza south to Zvirgzdene. Military analysts described the pause as consolidation.

Vītols announced the Article 5 invocation in a short address. "We were told for three months that the moment had not come," he said. "The moment came at four in the morning on Saturday, on a road that has a number and a name, in a country that signed the same treaty as everyone else."

Nine members announced force commitments within twenty-four hours. They are operating as a coalition under a combined headquarters established at Ādaži rather than under the alliance's integrated command structure, an arrangement officials described as necessary because the Council had not authorised a collective operation.

Romania and Bulgaria said their commitments were limited because their own borders required covering. Bulgaria offered transit and basing but no ground forces.

The North Atlantic Council met Wednesday evening and adjourned after six hours without a decision, scheduling a further session. Halvorsen said consultations were continuing and that she would not comment on individual national positions.

Officials from four delegations said the Council had divided on whether the Article 5 obligation, which commits members to take "such action as it deems necessary," required the dispatch of forces at all. Several delegations argued it did not.

Coalition planners face the problem that has shaped this crisis since January. The force assembling at Ādaži must be moved 200 kilometres east along a road and rail corridor that Russian systems can reach along most of its length. Air cover for that corridor depends on basing at Lielvārde and Šiauliai, both of which have come under sustained drone and missile attack since 11 April.

British Defence Secretary James Harrow, announcing his government's commitment to the Commons, addressed the corridor directly. "The honourable members asking whether this can be supplied are asking the right question," he said. "It can be supplied at a cost. The alternative is to establish, in front of a watching world, that this treaty means whatever the least willing signatory says it means on a given morning."

NATO emergency session ends without consensus as six members decline to send forces

An emergency session of the North Atlantic Council ended early Tuesday without agreement on a collective response to the war in eastern Latvia, after six members declined to commit forces to a conflict now in its seventh week and its fifth month since the first foreign troops crossed Latvia's border.

The United States, Turkey, France, Germany, Spain and Italy each stated that they would not deploy ground forces to Latvian territory. Their delegations blocked a draft authorising an alliance operation under the integrated command structure. The session's closing statement reaffirmed Article 5, condemned Russian aggression, and recorded that individual allies would determine their contributions nationally.

The formula was described by three delegations as the minimum text on which thirty-two governments could agree. One ambassador called it the most expensive sentence the alliance has ever written.

The American position, set out by Secretary of State Grant Ferrow, held that the treaty obliges members to take the action each deems necessary, and that Washington had determined the necessary action to be intelligence support, munitions transfer, sanctions and strategic airlift rather than ground forces. Ferrow said the United States would not put troops into a corridor it could not adequately defend for a town of 1,400 people.

Germany cited constitutional review and the requirement for a Bundestag mandate that its governing coalition does not command. France said its forces would remain committed to national and southern-flank tasks and that it opposed what its foreign minister called a war of position on terrain of Moscow's choosing. Italy and Spain issued near-identical statements emphasising a negotiated settlement. Turkey said it would not participate and offered to host talks.

Several other members committed logistics, medical support, munitions and air policing without ground forces, including Canada, which had led the multinational brigade in Latvia and whose government said its personnel would remain at Ādaži in a training and support role.

The nine-nation coalition fighting in Latgale reacted with open anger. Estonian Defence Minister Rein Talvik, who has lost 43 soldiers since April, spoke to reporters outside the session at 03:20.

"I want to be precise, because people will want to argue about this for a long time," he said. "The treaty was not repealed tonight. Nobody left. Nobody was expelled. Every ambassador in that room affirmed Article 5 and then explained why it required nothing of them. That is worse than repeal. A repealed treaty can be replaced."

Finnish Defence Minister Juhani Rautio said his government's assessment of its own security had changed permanently. Polish officials said planning had begun for arrangements among the contributing states that would not depend on the Council.

Russia's Foreign Ministry welcomed what Barsukova described as evidence that the alliance's guarantees were "a document, not an army." Russian forces hold a line from Nirza to Istra and have not advanced since 6 May.

Latvia's population east of Rēzekne has fallen by an estimated 40 percent since January. Vītols, the prime minister, made no statement Tuesday. His office released a photograph of him at a hospital in Jēkabpils.

The fighting on the Nirza line continued through the night.