This is pandoc filter that italizes all latin words in text, leaving words in other alphabets untouched (like cyrillic). This is requirement in Russian papers.
pandoc --lua-filter=italize-latin.lua input -o output
pandoc --lua-filter=italize-latin.lua input.md -o output.pdf
pandoc --lua-filter=italize-latin.lua input.md -o output.md
$ cat a.md
Unix-way - это хорошо
$ pandoc a.md --lua-filter=italize-latin.lua -o b.md
$ cat b.md
*Unix-way* - это хорошо