The doctor who treated Navalny was fired in Latvia due to his Russian passport 0 9

Alexander Polupan is a Russian doctor from Omsk, an anesthesiologist-resuscitator. He is one of those who saved Russian opposition leader Alexei Navalny after he was poisoned with Novichok in 2020, when the plane carrying the politician made an emergency landing in Omsk, writes Current Time.

In 2023, Polupan left Russia for Latvia: he disagreed with Putin's policies and the war that Russia started in Ukraine and did not want to have anything to do with the country where he was born and raised. Alexander planned to work in Riga at one of the largest hospitals in the country, where he was invited to work. He learned the Latvian language and passed the highest category exam – C1 – in the spring of 2025. But at that time, a new national security law was adopted in Latvia: it prohibited citizens of Russia and Belarus from working at "critical infrastructure facilities" in Latvia. Hospitals were also classified as such facilities, and after the law was adopted, Polupan was denied work at the hospital on the recommendation of the local security service, the State Security Service (SSS).

"In May 2025, I finally received my license in Latvia after passing all the exams and immediately received a job offer – starting in January. I planned to start working in a new resuscitation department that was opening at a hospital in Riga. They invited me during the exam," Alexander Polupan told Current Time. "Then I received a refusal. I later wrote a personal request to the SSS, attached my entire biography, explained what I had been doing in Riga, and that I had not been noticed for anything bad in Latvia, only for good. They said: 'Thank you for the information provided, but we do not see grounds to make an exception for you.'

Polupan is not the only resident of Latvia who has suffered from the recently adopted national security law. He was going to work at the Eastern Clinical University Hospital in Riga, and in addition to him, 13 other citizens of Russia and Belarus who lived permanently in Riga were also fired from this medical institution. Another Riga hospital, Stradins, reports ten dismissals. The Riga Children's Hospital is also parting ways with employees holding Russian and Belarusian passports. Proponents of the law consider these individuals "disloyal" to Latvia amid the sharp deterioration in relations between Russia and the EU and the possibility of war between Russia and the Baltic states.

In early February, it also became known that a regional hospital in Daugavpils, in eastern Latvia, fired 49 employees with Russian and Belarusian citizenship for the same reason:

However, unlike Polupan, most of those dismissed were local residents who had obtained Russian passports for personal reasons, rather than political refugees from Russia.

The SSS confirmed to Current Time that the law does allow for exceptions for certain Russians and Belarusians, but this requires special permission from the Latvian security authority. However, as Polupan mentioned earlier, he was unable to obtain it.

Professionally, Alexander acted in Omsk when Alexei Navalny was brought to their hospital while in a coma. Polupan insisted on the urgent need to transport the patient to Germany – despite the Russian authorities' objections.

Alexander has never hidden his views in Russia. After Navalny's return to Russia and his subsequent arrest, the doctor continued to publicly speak about the opposition politician's health and his death under suspicious circumstances in a penal colony in Kharp.

In 2023, Alexander became one of the doctors who signed an open letter to the Russian authorities demanding that Navalny receive proper medical care in the penal colony, where his condition was constantly deteriorating. After Navalny's death in February 2024, the doctor sharply criticized the official version of the death, "a detached thrombus," and questioned the official conclusion regarding the politician's death. But all these actions did not convince the Latvian authorities of his reliability.

Now Alexander is making a third, and he says likely final attempt to find work at a hospital in Latvia, not in the capital, but in the west of the country – in Liepaja. He is waiting for a new decision from the State Security Service and says that if he receives another refusal from Latvia, he will go to work in Switzerland: he is already starting to learn German.

"I think this is a very strange initiative," he criticizes the law adopted in Latvia regarding holders of Russian and Belarusian passports. "No one benefits from it, and it harms medical workers, including those who have worked in the country for many years. They seemed to pose no threat, but now for some reason they have begun to pose a threat. And the law also affects those Russians who moved to Latvia because of the war: as far as I know, not many of us moved, only four doctors started going through this process (of obtaining a license) after the war began, and I believe, if I'm not mistaken, I'm the only one who has already received a license."

"We were told that if we comply with the requirements of the law, we will be able to work. But then, in fact, a profession ban is imposed on us," the doctor emphasizes. "Because in my case, it is a complete ban on the profession, considering that resuscitation is only available in state clinics. Yes, there are doctors of certain specialties who can go work in a private clinic, but there are simply no resuscitation departments in private clinics."

"So yes, in my case, it is a direct ban on the profession. And this is not the best practice that Latvia adopted from the Soviet Union after liberation from occupation," he notes.