Will Putin target Latvia next?

The Baltic states do not feel like a front line. I did not see a police officer in more than a week in Latvia, let alone a soldier. Somewhere out there were three NATO battalions, deployed to deter Putin from crossing the border. But if it wasn’t for the seediness that lingers like a bad smell – the occasional Brezhnev brutalist building and the memorials to the murdered Jews – I could think myself in a European country that had never experienced the twin curses of Nazism and communism.

The art nouveau architecture is as fine as any you will see in Paris or Barcelona, and covers many more streets. There are Italian restaurants everywhere. People looked a little bewildered when I said I wanted to try Latvian dishes. What were they? Lentils? Sausages? Why don’t you eat what everyone else eats?

Admittedly, there is plenty of vodka and a sweet and bitter liqueur called Riga Black Balsam, which at 45 per cent ABV tastes as if you can use it as a paint stripper.