“I am resigning but I am not giving up.” With that line on Thursday, May 14, Latvian Prime Minister Evika Siliņa stepped down, bringing her coalition to an end a few months ahead of a general election planned for October.
The trouble began with drones. On 7 May, three of them entered Latvian airspace. One crashed on the ground. Another hit an empty oil product storage facility near the town of Rezekne. The third flew in and out again. Nobody was hurt, but it was the second such incident since the start of 2026. Both Latvia and Ukraine acknowledged that the aircraft may have been Ukrainian drones aimed at Russia whose signals were jammed, sending them off course.
Residents told media the official response came late and fell short. They said the cell broadcast alert system was not switched on until an hour after one drone came down near Rezekne.
The defence minister goes
Siliņa fired Defence Minister Andris Sprūds, a member of the Progressives party, the previous Sunday. She said he had lost her trust and the public’s. “Something went wrong,” she said after the incident. “We cannot afford for this situation to continue.” The army chief had told her the drones were not detected as they came in from Russia, and she faulted Sprūds for failing to push anti-drone systems forward quickly enough.
She also said the drone strike “clearly demonstrates that the political leadership of the defence sector has failed to fulfil its promise of safe skies over our country.”
The Progressives, her left-leaning partner, pulled their backing in protest. Nine of Sprūds’s fellow party members quit the coalition, alleging he had been made a scapegoat. The government was left holding 41 seats in the 100-seat parliament and faced a confidence vote it was unlikely to win.
Siliņa, who leads the centre-right New Unity party, hit back at her critics. “Seeing a strong candidate for the post of defence minister… political windbags have chosen a crisis,” she said. Latvia spends 5% of its GDP on national defence, she noted, which in her view demands a “much higher level of responsibility toward society.”
Ukraine’s explanation
Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said the intrusions were “the result of Russian electronic warfare deliberately diverting Ukrainian drones from their targets in Russia.” President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has offered to send experts to Latvia to help protect its skies. Drones have strayed from Russia into Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia repeatedly since March, and critics of the Latvian government say that exposes weak spots in its defences.
What comes next
President Edgars Rinkēvičs was due to meet representatives of all parties on Friday, May 15, to discuss forming a new government, and said he wanted the quickest possible formation. Siliņa had led a three-party coalition since September 2023, and her government was a steady backer of Ukraine. Latvia, like Lithuania and Estonia, worries about possible Russian aggression, and it has sharply sped up its defence build-up and brought back compulsory military service.
Sources
- Latvian PM Evika Silina resigns over response to drone incursions
- Latvian prime minister resigns amid row over drone incursions
