Russia has announced plans to bring proceedings against the Baltic states before the International Court of Justice (ICJ), alleging discrimination against Russian-speaking populations, Estonian public broadcaster ERR reports.

Moscow has not yet filed its application to the court in The Hague, but the declared intention signals a potential new state-to-state dispute at the world's principal judicial organ of the United Nations.

The announcement positions language and minority-rights policy in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania — long a point of friction between Russia and its Baltic neighbors — at the center of a prospective international legal showdown.

The Baltic states have not yet responded publicly to Russia's stated plan, and the ICJ has received no filing to date, according to the ERR report.

Practitioners will want to watch for the precise jurisdictional basis Russia invokes. The ICJ needs consent of both parties, typically through a compromissory clause in a treaty or a declaration under the Optional Protocol. Given the absence of bilateral arrangements between Russia and the Baltic states, Moscow would likely need to anchor its claim in a multilateral instrument such as the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination or a comparable human-rights treaty.

A full application, once lodged, would trigger the court's ordinary contentious procedure: an ICJ president review, the appointment of agents, and written pleadings that typically run 18 to 30 months before oral hearings. The Baltic states could also raise preliminary objections to jurisdiction, which would delay any merits determination considerably.

For now, the development remains a political signal rather than a live case. Until Russia files, the ICJ docket is unaffected. But if proceedings follow, they would mark one of the most consequential minority-rights disputes to reach The Hague involving post-Soviet states — and a test of whether language-policy disputes can be framed as racial or ethnic discrimination under international law.

The report did not specify a timeline for the filing or which treaty mechanisms Russia intends to rely on.