Daugavpils
Largest Russian-speaking city in EU/NATO (80% Russian speakers, 78,850 population). Birthplace of Mark Rothko. A 19th-century fortress obsolete before it was finished.
Daugavpils is the largest Russian-speaking city in the European Union and NATO—a demographic fact that makes it geopolitically unique. As of 2023, 78,850 people live here; 80% speak Russian as their primary language. In 2012, 85% of local voters supported making Russian Latvia's second official language. The referendum failed nationally but passed overwhelmingly here.
The city began as Dinaburg (1275), a Livonian Order castle on the Daugava River. It has been Borisoglebsk (1656-1667), Dvinsk (1893-1920), and finally Daugavpils since Latvian independence. Catherine the Great absorbed it into Russia in 1772. The Russians built a massive fortress here between 1810 and 1878—one of the best-preserved 19th-century military installations in Northern Europe—only for the Warsaw-St. Petersburg railway (1860) to render it strategically obsolete before completion.
Today the fortress houses the Rothko Museum, honoring Mark Rothko, the abstract expressionist born here as Marcus Yakovlevich Rothkowitz in 1903. Daugavpils exports culture now: Rothko's canvases sell for tens of millions.
By 2026, EU-Russia tensions will test whether Daugavpils can remain integrated or becomes increasingly isolated—a Russian-speaking enclave whose strategic position matters more than its economy.