A Riga city court sentenced Latvian citizen and pro-Russian activist Polina Kamlyova to six years in prison for financing the Russian military. On Oct. 7, the court found that Kamlyova had transferred approximately 43 euros toward the purchase of a device designed to jam drones. She was also sentenced to three years of probation supervision.
Prosecutors said Kamlyova did not transfer the money directly. In December 2024, an acquaintance in Russia linked to the Kaskad military-patriotic special training center asked her to help raise money for the “Kupolny Pokrov REB FPV-4,” an electronic countermeasure system intended to disrupt or jam FPV drones. Due to sanctions, it was not possible to transfer money from a Latvian bank directly to Russia, and so Kamlyova asked an acquaintance in Belarus to make the payment on her behalf without telling him its true purpose. He transferred 157 Belarusian rubles, about 43 euros, from his account to the Russian bank account of Kamlyova’s acquaintance, the Latvian prosecutor’s office said
Kamlyova denied any wrongdoing. In her final statement, published by Baltija.eu, she said she did not know the transfer was intended for military use:
“The prosecution says the messages on my phone concerned a request from the Russian army. But that was not said in the correspondence. I was communicating with a private individual. I did not transfer anything myself; I had no funds. There was no intention to finance the war. There was no intent!”
Kamlyova said the correspondence was found when her phone was checked at the Latvian border after she returned from Russia. She said a State Security Service officer looked through her photographs with her permission but then began reading and photographing her messages on his own phone without her consent. Latvian law enforcement agencies have not officially disclosed how they obtained information about the transfer.
As was reported by the independent exiled publication Mediazona, Kamlyova worked at a garment factory and was a member of the Latvian Russian Union, a political party that appeals to Latvia’s Russian-speaking minority. She ran for a seat on the Rēzekne city council on the party’s ticket in 2017.
