From St. Petersburg to rural Latvia: how the war in Ukraine changed Irina Petropavlovska's life
St. Petersburg native Irina Petropavlovska left Russia after its invasion of Ukraine and moved to Latvia's Aizkraukle municipality, where she now works and studies Latvian. She shared her story and views at a meeting organized by the association 'Laime Saimē' at the Pļaviņas library.
Irina Petropavlovska, originally from St. Petersburg, shared her story at a meeting of the 'Laime Saimē' association at the Pļaviņas library, describing how she decided to leave Russia for Latvia just days after the start of the full-scale invasion of Ukraine four years ago.
Irina described the war as incomprehensible and pointless. She recalled that already in 2014, watching the annexation of Crimea and attacks on Georgia, she had believed the international community would not allow an aggressor to act with impunity. That belief proved wrong, and the lack of consequences only emboldened the aggressor further.
History repeating
The current war brings back memories of her grandfather, who died in the 1939–1940 Winter War between the Soviet Union and Finland — a conflict still rarely discussed in Russia and whose participants have no memorials, despite at least 150,000 officially recorded deaths. Irina sees parallels in the widespread belief, then and now, that the fighting would end within days.
Her grandfather belonged to the Izhorians, a small Finnic people who once lived in the area around present-day St. Petersburg. Irina recalled that in the 1990s a sense of freedom emerged in Russia, giving rise to regional movements that drew attention to small nations and territorial autonomy — topics now considered dangerous to discuss. She remains convinced that freedom cannot be suppressed indefinitely and that empires built on force eventually collapse, though she acknowledges Russia's one-sided information space could delay that outcome for a long time.
A new life in Latvia
Irina and her late husband already had ties to the Aizkraukle region before the war: after Russia's earlier waves of aggression, they bought a house in Aiviekste parish and planned to set up a small mineral fertilizer production facility in Skrīveri, though the venture did not succeed. Her husband died during the pandemic, and Irina came to Latvia alone.
She now works as a caretaker in Pļaviņas, where locals have come to value her work highly. She is learning Latvian, mostly on her own since no language courses are available nearby, and can already communicate in the language, though not yet fluently. She stays in touch with her mother, who remains in St. Petersburg, mainly via WhatsApp, though Russian internet restrictions often interfere. She has no plans to return to Russia, and her children, who live abroad, also do not wish to go back.
