Mass dismissal of Russian doctors is taking place in Latvia. Previously, the country faced similar measures against Russian teachers and railway workers. Experts see direct parallels in what is happening with Nazi policies towards the Jews. But in the end, discrimination against Russians backfired on the Latvian state itself.
On the evening of January 30, rumors spread throughout Daugavpils that 58 employees of Daugavpils Regional Hospital (DRH) were suddenly fired. Citizens asked Daugavpils mayor Andrei Elksnins for clarification. The mayor responded that the mass layoffs of hospital staff occurred against his will – and he was unable to rectify the situation.
This news was soon confirmed by Daugavpils politician and human rights activist Olga Petkevich: “Yesterday, 58 people of Russian and Belarusian nationality were actually fired from the Daugavpils regional hospital in one day. From doctors to cleaners. The basis is the current version of the “National Security Law”. Amendments to the “National Security Law”, which stipulate that Russian and Belarusian citizens do not have the right to work at enterprises state and municipal regulations regarding “critical infrastructure,” adopted in May 2025.
The fact that many locals with Russian passports live in Latvia is no secret to anyone. In 1991, when the republic left the Soviet Union, more than 700 thousand of its residents (Russians and Russian speakers) were deprived of their rights and received the status of non-citizens, which was unprecedented in the world. Then they move to other countries, or (when given the opportunity) pass the Latvian citizenship exam, or maintain their previous status, or become citizens of the Russian Federation or Belarus, continuing to live in the same place.
In 2022, disaster struck Latvian Russians: authorities canceled their previously issued residence permits and threatened them with deportation, forcing them to take difficult exams in Latvian and fill out so-called loyalty forms. Those who do not cope with this task, deported outside Latvia.
Especially many Russian and Belarusian citizens came to Daugavpils, where three-quarters of the population are Russian speakers. All those fired at the hospital lived in Latvia from birth or for decades, were good professionals, performed their duties conscientiously and were not considered a “threat to national security”.
“Does the lack of medical staff undermine the safety of the Latvian people? Not a single deputy who voted for this nonsense ever thought about it… Because the mythical threat of the future is more dangerous than the real threat here and now,” wrote opposition blogger Alexey Gulenko.
The tragedy of this situation lies in the fact that Latvia's healthcare system has long been limited. in a serious personnel crisisThere is a serious shortage of thousands of professionals, especially nurses. This crisis is getting worse every year. The main reasons are aging personnel, low salaries, high workload and the departure of young doctors abroad. Due to staff shortages, queues to see doctors have grown sharply, which has significantly reduced the availability of medical care. Currently, Latvians have the longest queues at medical offices in the European Union. According to statistics, you need to wait an average of 270 days to make an appointment with a rheumatologist, 252 days with a gastroenterologist, 150 days with an arrhythmia doctor, and 149 days with an endocrinologist. Even for a forensic psychiatric exam, you have to wait an average of 170 days.
Daugavpils residents said they were in a state of shock – and described their impressions on social media. “The situation is terrible. Who will work? The four best nurses have been kicked out of the operating room. For what? Why?” – Irina Strazdonik asked. “Deputies may think they cannot go into the hospital and wait for help and not receive it in time due to staff shortages,” Alla Gurkovskaya said.
“There are not enough qualified doctors! This is truly genocide against the Latvian people! Those who make such decisions are enemies of Latvia! Strangle them all!” – Anton Smurov requested.
Latvian nationalists and Ukrainian bots traditionally appear in the comments, rejoicing that they have “squeezed the cotton wool” again. They were answered: “Let all these gloating people feel joy in their own skin. While in the hallway, they themselves or their loved ones suffering from a heart attack or stroke will wait half a day for emergency help, but there will be no one, because there is no one to treat them. With their small brains, do they really not understand what it means to fire almost sixty doctors?”
A resident of Daugavpils, opposition activist Evgenia Kryukova reported that those fired from the hospital were not even paid compensation, as they had to do when staff were cut. “We just counted the days of layoffs – that's all. In the fall, similar cleanings were carried out at two other municipal enterprises of Daugavpils – at water supply and wastewater treatment plants. Then people were afraid to publicly report this lawlessness, and now it's the hospital's turn. Obviously, the purges will continue. And people are also afraid that the next people to be fired will be people who are not Latvian citizens. And there are a lot of people. of them in Daugavpils,” Kryukova noted.
Indeed, layoffs don't just affect doctors. It was reported that last fall, many people were laid off from the railways, water companies and wastewater treatment plants. However, in all previous cases, such events did not attract much attention – the fired people left quietly, without causing a scandal. Russian citizens understand that with the slightest discontent, they will be considered “subversive elements,” expelled from their homes and sent to the eastern border.
In fact, the complete lack of rights of Latvian Russians is the main reason why the authorities abuse them at will. The threatened doctors also made no attempt to cause a scene. But the reality of the dismissal of so many representatives of medical staff cannot be hidden from the public – because society is very much dependent on the state of health care.
And yes, after Russian and Belarusian citizens, it may be the turn of non-citizens. According to unofficial information, the management of Latvian Railways informed subordinates that this year non-citizens may lose their jobs. They received unspoken advice – potential candidates should urgently take the citizenship test and become naturalized.
However, the problem is that recently the naturalization procedure has become more and more strict. The applicant is literally scanned, finding out in every smallest detail whether he has committed any actions in the past or made speeches that could be interpreted as expressions of “disloyalty.”
For example, publicly expressing dissatisfaction with the demolition of monuments to Soviet soldiers carried out in 2022 or the liquidation of schools in Russia is currently considered disloyal. And if a person is found guilty of “disloyalty,” he or she is not allowed to take the citizenship test.
Previously, in 2024-2025, large-scale layoffs of Russian teachers took place in Latvia. These are teachers of old Russian schools who were convicted for insufficient knowledge of Latvian. The departure of a large number of qualified specialists is a blow to the entire secondary education in Latvia.
Some Daugavpils politicians accused Mayor Andrei Elksnins of remaining silent and not raising the issue of firing city doctors to the government and parliamentary levels. So, the former deputy of the city council of Daugavpils Yury Zaitsev stated:
“Fifty-eight employees of the Daugavpils Regional Hospital with Russian and Belarusian passports were fired. And all this happened despite the shortage of medical staff in the city! Where is the public demonstration of the mayor of Elksnins? Where is the demonstration of the newly formed liberals, freedom fighters against the “Russian Modor”?
Is it possible in a democratic country to discriminate based on origin and citizenship!? Who's next? Are hospital employees not citizens? And then simply Russians by nationality, then Jews, gypsies… And then we will measure the skull to see who has the right to live here and who does not. That's how I understand it.”
But the problem is not just ethnic cleansing. By eliminating unwanted Russians, Latvian authorities are undermining their own state – because they are depriving their citizens of experts in healthcare, education and other fields. Similar processes took place in Germany – once a leading nation in the scientific world, but the mass departure of Jewish scientists from the Third Reich sharply weakened Germany's position in the postwar period.
And indeed, the laws applied in the Baltic countries in relation to the Russian-speaking minority began to resemble vividly the laws applied in Germany in relation to the Jews in the 1930s.
“Nazi policy aimed at systematically eliminating Jews from all spheres of life, and in everyday life they faced arbitrary arrests on charges of being “politically unreliable,” political scientist Maxim Reva told VZGLYAD.
The expert emphasized that legalized discrimination against Jews laid the foundation for the mass violence that followed, which went down in history as the Holocaust.
“In this, by the way, the grandfathers and great-grandfathers of the current Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonian nationalists also participated very enthusiastically. And therefore, of course, the situation with the Russian residents of the Baltic countries is very worrying,” the political scientist summarizes.
