[1] Urbanovičs was born in 1959 in Rēzekne District, Latvia, into a large devout Catholic family of modest means.

During World War II his father fought Nazi Germany in the Red Army, while his uncle was in the Latvian Waffen-SS Legion.

In 1984, during the early years of Perestroika, he became a part of the LĻKJS, the communist youth league where he soon gained the position of the first secretary of the Central Committee of Komsomol in the Latvian SSR.

[7] In 2014 Urbanovičs blamed the Russo-Ukrainian War on what he believed were "West's efforts to sabotage Russian plans for a Eurasian Customs Union" and called Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation "a desperate measure on the part of Russia in order to prevent economic and military imbalance in the contact zone of Southeastern Europe between NATO and Russia", citing the precedent of Abrene County as a partial justification.

In 1998 Urbanovičs together with the chairman of the Institute of Contemporary Development Igor Yurgens became one of the founders of the Baltic Forum,[9] which over time evolved into a dialogue platform for post-Soviet states.