“I was defending Latvia there, I didn’t fight for Ukraine,” said former Latvian Saeima deputy Sandis Riekstiņš in an interview to Artuss Kaimiņš. Riekstiņš has been serving in the Ukrainian army for several months. In his conversation with Artuss Kaimiņš, the ex-deputy spoke openly about training and drones, life in Ukraine, as well as his views about the developments in Latvian politics and what kind of Minister of Defence the country needs.
Sandis Riekstiņš mentioned in his interview that although he has been in Ukraine for six months, he has not seen any combat due to lengthy paperwork procedures. He is the only legionnaire from Latvia in a new unit that is still being formed and whose main task will be exclusively drones. “They do not send us to the combat zone until we have passed our training,” claims Sandis Riekstiņš.
In response to what Artuss Kaimiņš said, that in the current war, war is fought less with weapons and more with drones, Sandis Riekstiņš admits that it is, moreover, this process is constantly evolving and changing, because “the Russians are not fools either”.
According to him, “Those drones are different, there are drones that you program, send flying and then it pilots itself. You program what it needs to do at certain points – where to drop the bomb, when to record, and when to take a photo. You let it go and it comes back, you don’t manually pilot it. There are drones that you control manually. You come in, quickly dig in, then 24 hours a day, two of you can operate drones from that place, then you have to land because they will find you. Drone operators are the number one target.”
When asked whether Latvia, in his opinion, has a good Minister of Defence, Sandis Riekstiņš reveals that he does not consider him (Andris Sprūdis – ed.) to be a Minister of Defence. “Remember, there were interviews before he came close into politics. He was already an ambiguous guy. Now he’s trying to tell something here and show me, I don’t know, he’s a dreadful minister. In my opinion, the minister should be a decent man and maybe even an army man.”
In turn, when asked to evaluate the departure of the former Prime Minister Krišjānis Kariņš (JV) from politics and going into private business, Riekstiņš says: “Unity has realized that that passenger is no longer eligible for rides, so now he is free. I admit, he himself was also not at all comfortable to work as a Saeima deputy. He got used to being somewhere else, but then he became a rank and file deputy.”