Fact-checkers challenge opposition claims on Latvia’s aid to Ukraine
Wednesday 9th September 2026 on 07:45 in
Latvia
Latvian opposition politicians have criticised support for Ukraine using distorted facts, claiming that Latvia is sending generators abroad while residents remain without electricity after a storm, according to LSM’s Re:Check fact-checking project, produced by Re:Baltica.
Power supplies were disrupted for about 277,000 households during the storm on the night of August 23. Although electricity was restored relatively quickly for most, outages lasted several days or even a week in some places, particularly in Latgale, where water supplies and mobile communications also failed in some areas.
Politicians from the Latvia First Place party and Sovereign Power/Association Young Latvians later accused the government on social media of forgetting Latvia’s residents while buying generators for Ukraine. The claims were also made by several representatives of Latvia First Place, including Olga Petkevicha, a TikTok content creator and the party’s fourth candidate on its Latgale list.
Petkevicha said that Latvia had launched a large procurement in April and had begun delivering 48 diesel generators to Ukraine in July, with the total procurement exceeding one million euros. She contrasted this with the situation of a family with several children and a nine-month-old baby in the Demene parish, which she said was still without electricity on August 25, three days after the storm.
Latvia is providing Ukraine with diesel generators because the country is facing a prolonged war, Re:Check reported. In February, the government approved an Economy Ministry proposal to purchase and send generators to Ukraine’s Chernihiv region using 1.2 million euros allocated for its reconstruction.
At the end of August, the government decided to order 12 more units after the ministry determined that the allocated funds could buy more equipment. Latvia’s August storm was the strongest in 60 years, while Russia regularly attacks electricity infrastructure in the Chernihiv region.
The generators could not have been distributed to Latvian households in the same way because they are large, stationary units that require a project and a specially constructed connection.