That is important because Russian-speaking also includes Belarusians and Ukrainians as well, in Latvia.
If we talk about ethnic Russians, ethnic Russian minorities in Latvia account for 10% of our population. When we talk about the Russian-speaking population, then it's around 30% to 32%, which is a considerable part, but I mean we have a very diverse minority in Latvia, and we do not distinguish one larger group or smaller. The engagement from the government, from the state level, with minorities is on all fronts and all levels.
There is one thing in regard to non-citizens, and I have to go back in history. I don't know how many of you know the status and why Latvia adopted such a status for individuals as non-citizens. It all goes back to 1991 when we regained our independence. At that time, during the 50 years of occupation, around 800,000 people from across the Soviet Union were sent to Latvia.
In the meantime, if we look at Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, Latvia was the severely militarized Baltic country among all three Baltic States. We have a lot of military bases and Russian troops based in Latvia. After regaining our independence, we had more than 25,000 Russian military officers, with their family members, in Latvia.
The situation was slightly different in Lithuania. The percentage of these individuals was much lower. Yes, they pursued the way of granting citizenship to all. Estonia was slightly higher, but not as high as in Latvia.
For us, at that point, we couldn't grant automatic citizenship to all, because that would be a national security threat in the long term, because it was only by 1994 that we got Russian troops out of Latvia. Nevertheless, the non-citizenship status is in accordance with international law. Latvia just didn't decide to invent it and that's it—it's in accordance with international law. In the meantime, we also introduced the naturalization process, where if there is an individual who wants to, he can actually apply and become a full-fledged Latvian citizen. Of course, he must undergo the naturalization process with knowledge of state language and history. We don't have any deadline for naturalization. It's open until the last one... Anyone can do it. Over more than 28 years, yes, the number of non-citizens is reducing. Some people argue that it's naturally because people are dying out and so on, but a lot of them are deciding to naturalize.
Then, of course, the question remains as to why we still have around 200,000 non-citizens. We cannot force citizenship on anybody; that's a human right as well. In that regard, I have to explain why it's very convenient to keep the status of non-citizenship for some. It's because non-citizens are excluded of only two rights: the right to vote and the right to take public office. All other rights are the same as citizens': work, education, studying and travelling abroad.
With that said, they can travel across the European Union and work in other member states as regular citizens, but in the meantime, they also receive—and it's usually the non-citizens right now who are the older generation, age 55 and up—the Latvian pension, and in the meantime, the Russian pension as well. It's a double win for them. They don't require a visa to travel to Russia. Of course, this is a bilateral question between Latvia and the Russian Federation.
Russia is not fully exchanging the information on how many non-citizens actually have Russian citizenship and a passport. They're excluding that information, because it is evidence in the Russian Federation presidential elections that were conducted last year. Even though they registered, how many have a Russian citizenship? Also what about the tourists who were present at the elections?
There was a much higher number of those who voted in the booths in Latvia for the election of the Russian president. So that means a lot of non-citizens are holding, in the meantime, a Russian citizenship as well.