Why do ethnic Russians who live in Latvia can't speak Latvian?

I edited the question before writing this answer - whoever wrote the question was not particularly fluent in English. I am an ethnic Russian who was born on the territory of Latvia. read more

Studies have shown that up to 95% of ethnic Russians living in Latvia understand Latvian, but because a lot of Latvians speak Russian, they don’t necessarily need to use this knowledge. Because around half of the population of Latvia is of Russian origin, this means that there is a large community of Russians in Latvia. read more

Russians have been the largest ethnic minority in Latvia for the last two centuries. The number of Russians in Latvia increased significantly during the Soviet occupation of Latvia when the size of the community grew from 10.5% of the total population in 1935 to 34.0% in 1989. It started to decrease in size again after Latvia regained independence in 1991 falling to 25.4% at the beginning of 2017. read more

What happens is that ethnic Russians who were even born in Latvia and speak perfect Latvian are disenfranchised. They are treated as 2nd class citizens in many areas of life. So they ether leave Latvia or they begin leaning towards Russia as their ethnic and emotional home. read more