- Lead. Latvia’s governing coalition collapsed this week after multiple drones entered the country’s airspace and crashed in the eastern Latgale region, forcing the prime minister and defence minister to resign within days of each other.
- Fact. One drone struck an oil storage facility near Balvi; emergency alerts reached local residents nearly an hour after impact, a delay that became the proximate cause of the political crisis.
- Stake. Lithuania, Estonia, and Finland all reported drone alerts on the same day, signalling a Baltic-wide airspace vulnerability with direct implications for NATO’s eastern flank.
Latvia’s Prime Minister Evika Siliņa announced her resignation on Thursday after her governing coalition fractured in the aftermath of a drone incursion that has become the country’s most acute domestic security crisis in recent years. Defence Minister Andris Sprūds had already stepped down the previous Sunday, having come under sustained criticism over the failures the incident exposed.
Drones over Latgale
Several drones entered Latvian airspace last week and crashed in the eastern Latgale region, close to the Russian border. One struck an oil storage facility near Balvi, sparking a minor fire that was extinguished without casualties. The more politically damaging revelation was the emergency notification timeline: official alerts did not reach residents in the affected area until nearly an hour after the drones had already landed. Siliņa’s own statement acknowledged that the incident “clearly demonstrated that the political leadership of the defence sector has failed to fulfil its promise of safe skies.”
Latvian officials attributed the incursion to Russian electronic warfare, arguing that Moscow had redirected Ukrainian combat drones off their intended flight paths and into Baltic airspace — a practice reported by Euronews as part of a broader pattern of electronic interference along the Baltic rim. Sprūds, in his final interviews as minister, acknowledged the difficulty of intercepting “drones which have lost their trajectory” and said Latvia must strengthen resilience against future crises “that are coming.”
The broader Baltic picture
The Latgale incursion was not an isolated event. Lithuania and Estonia recorded drone alerts on the same day; Finland reported a separate incident in parallel. Across the four countries, the incidents exposed a shared gap: early-warning infrastructure that was designed for a different threat environment is struggling to keep pace with the scale and electronic complexity of the drone warfare now routine on NATO’s eastern perimeter.
Latvia’s political crisis arrives at a particularly consequential moment. The country is finalising a €3.49 billion EU defence loan through the Security Action for Europe (SAFE) scheme — one of the largest Baltic commitments to the continent’s new collective rearmament framework. The caretaker government that follows Siliņa will need to continue those negotiations while simultaneously rebuilding political credibility on the question of air defence. Coalition talks are expected to be lengthy, and the drone file will sit at the centre of any programme agreement that emerges.