He and his mother Astrīda were stripped of Soviet citizenship and ordered under duress to leave the USSR by the KGB in July 1988 for his participation in Helsinki-86.
[3][4] From 1988 to 1990 Pupurs lived in West Germany, actively participating in the Latvian exile political movement and cultural life.
[6] From 2007 to 2008 he served in New Hampshire, Texas and Arizona, and from 2008 to February 2010 he was posted to Iraq and Germany with the Medical Service Corps (U.S. Army), receiving a number of decorations.
[7][1] He graduated from Massachusetts State University in Boston in 1999,[8] and in 2003 obtained his master's degree from the London School of Economics in Russian and Post-Soviet Studies.
After his military service, he returned to Latvia in 2010, where he served in the Riga Municipal Police, later joining the Latvian Maritime Academy as a lecturer and translator.