A new law in Latvia is forcing Russian and Belarusian workers out of hospitals, railways, and power companies — with no severance and no exceptions

Latvia introduced sweeping labor restrictions in the summer of 2025 that bar Russian and Belarusian citizens from employment at sites designated as “critical infrastructure” — a category that includes the country’s major state-run hospitals. The policy has cost at least 100 people their jobs. Among them was Alexander Polupan, a Russian intensive-care physician who treated Alexey Navalny following the opposition leader’s poisoning and openly supported him during his imprisonment. Polupan learned Latvian and obtained a medical license, but he is now unable to find work in his field without clearance from Latvia’s Security Service. As a result, Polupan says, he is effectively banned from practicing his profession.

In the summer of 2025, Latvia adopted amendments to its national security law that prohibit citizens of Russia and Belarus from owning or managing critical infrastructure sites. Like most countries, Latvia does not publicly disclose which sites qualify as critical infrastructure. The law defines them only broadly as facilities essential to public health, safety, and socioeconomic well-being — facilities whose destruction would significantly impair core functions of the state and society. The amendments also bar Russian and Belarusian nationals from working at such sites if their positions involve access to information or equipment that is “of significant importance to the functioning of critical infrastructure.” 

According to the Latvian government, as of mid-2025, nearly 42,000 Russian citizens and more than 4,200 Belarusian citizens were living in the country.

Once the amendments took effect, 49 people were dismissed from a regional hospital in Daugavpils. According to a source at the outlet Chaika, employees were notified of their dismissal on January 30, 2026, and all paperwork was processed in a single day. Thirteen staff members were let go from Eastern Hospital, and 10 from Pauls Stradins Hospital. Riga Children’s Hospital, which also employs several Russian and Belarusian citizens, is still assessing whether they meet the criteria for dismissal.

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Latvian Railways has already dismissed, or plans to dismiss, 26 workers holding Russian or Belarusian citizenship. Sadales Tikls, Latvia’s largest electricity distribution operator, laid off two employees. Other entities that can be classified as critical infrastructure — including Riga’s airport and seaport, the natural gas distribution operator Gaso, the energy company Latvenergo, and the Latvian State Radio and Television Center — told the press that they employ no citizens of Belarus or Russia.

Girts Ozols, chairman of the board of the Latvian State Radio and Television Center, noted that his organization had previously faced a similar situation. “Six or seven years ago, employees had to choose — obtain Latvian citizenship or leave,” he said, adding that the earlier round of departures was “largely our initiative.” 

Ozols was referring to the “non-citizen” status created for Latvian residents who did not automatically receive citizenship after the USSR’s collapse. Under the arrangement, non-citizens had certain rights curtailed (most notably the right to vote), though they retained the option of obtaining Latvian citizenship by learning the language and passing an exam on the fundamentals of the Constitution, the national anthem, and Latvian history and culture.

Among those swept up in Latvia’s new restrictions was a physician with an uncommon place in recent Russian history: Alexander Polupan, a Moscow anesthesiologist and intensive-care specialist who was part of the team of doctors who raced to diagnose Alexey Navalny after he was poisoned with Novichok in 2020. Polupan also helped organize an open letter from physicians calling for an end to Navalny’s mistreatment in custody and later publicly questioned the official account of the opposition leader’s death in prison.

Polupan told the news outlet Current Time that he left for Latvia in 2023 for political reasons, including his opposition to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. By May 2025, he had passed the Latvian language exam at the advanced C1 level and obtained all the necessary permits to practice medicine. Polupan was invited to work in a new intensive-care unit at Riga’s Eastern Hospital. He was supposed to begin in January 2026, but after a review by Latvia’s State Security Service, he was denied the position.

The doctor said he had filed a personal appeal with Latvia’s security service, enclosing his full biography and a description of his work in Riga. “I told them that, on the whole, I had never been associated with anything negative in Latvia — only positive things,” he said, recalling how he saved the life of an elderly man in October 2023 when the man went into cardiac arrest at a rally in Riga. The response, he recalled, was polite but final: “They said, ‘Thank you for the information provided, but we see no basis for granting you an exception.’”

In fact, Latvia’s national security law allows Russian and Belarusian citizens to work at critical infrastructure sites if they obtain individual clearance from the nation’s security service. Organizations that have been forced to dismiss Russian and Belarusian employees — including Latvian Railways and a hospital in Daugavpils — have sought such exemptions for some of their staff. However, as of early February 2026, the security service has not granted any of these requests, ruling that shortages of specialists in a given field and rising costs are insufficient grounds for an exception.

Polupan is now making a third attempt to find work in Latvia, this time not in Riga but in Liepaja. He is awaiting a decision once more and plans to move to Switzerland to practice medicine if he is rejected again. Polupan says the employment restrictions imposed by Latvia’s authorities amount, in his case, to a ban on his profession.

“Not many of us moved here,” Polupan said of Russian citizens who relocated to Latvia. “As far as I know, only four doctors started the licensing process after the war began. And I think I’m the only one who’s finished it.” He said they had been promised a straightforward bargain: follow the law, get your license, and you’ll be allowed to work. “But then they effectively banned us from our profession. In my case, it’s a total ban — because ICUs only exist in state hospitals. Some doctors might be able to work in private clinics, sure. But there’s no such thing as a private ICU.”

Latvia’s human rights commissioner, Karina Palkova, has also criticized the employment restrictions on Russian and Belarusian citizens, focusing not on the policy itself but on its application. She has said that workers who lose their positions through no fault of their own, but because of a government-imposed ban, should be entitled to social protections, such as severance pay. Currently, because the legal requirements fall outside an employer’s responsibility, Russians and Belarusians dismissed under Latvia’s policy are not entitled to such compensation.