Russia's historical tactics are quite similar to China's

Just as China has spent a long time migrating Han Chinese populations to fill Manchuria, Inner Mongolia, and Uyghur regions with Han people today,
Russia has also been manipulating small Eastern European nations at will since the Imperial era.
By intentionally facilitating Russian migrations over a long period,
the Russian population in the current Baltic states has grown to a level that places an immense burden on their respective governments.
(In Estonia and Latvia, they reside at 21% and 24% of the total population respectively... wow)
As a result, anti-Russian sentiment is incredibly intense in countries with large Russian populations.
Furthermore, when the Soviet Union established the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic in the region east of the Dniester River,
Moldova became separated from Romania, and even now, there are ongoing debates about unification.
Even after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when Moldova tried to move closer to Romania, Russia feared they might actually unify.
So, they provided armed support to the Russian-speaking regions east of the Dniester River,
leading to an outright war in '92 where the Russian military intervened directly.
This resulted in the birth of Transnistria, a puppet state that is effectively outside the control of the Moldovan government.
While migrating one's own citizens to neighboring countries is something Western Europe has also done historically,
using established diasporas as a pretext to divide other nations, trigger civil wars,
and using that as leverage to threaten the Baltic states (such as saying they won't stand by if the Estonian government discriminates against ethnic Russians)
...is something Russia is currently doing. Their tactics are historically identical to China's...
continuously migrating their own population and using that as a pretext to exert influence and expand territory even in the modern era.