Who’s a Latvian and why? A complex question just got harder.

The nature of Alice Zvezda’s identity is as challenging to juggle as the infant she’s pushing around a Riga park.

“My husband is Latvian and I am Russian. So I am like, both. I feel myself both,” says Ms. Zvezda as she rocks her baby stroller cradling a next-generation Russian Latvian.

That kind of dual identity had been growing easier to navigate as Latvians distanced themselves from memories of their country’s 50-year occupation by the Soviet Union that ended in the early 1990s.

But it suddenly got harder last February, when Russia invaded Ukraine and the Latvian government began arming itself with words and weapons: It is reinstituting the military draft, excising Russian language from