Latvian Prime Minister Evika Silina announced her resignation on Thursday following the collapse of her three-party coalition government, set off by a dispute over how her administration handled Ukrainian drones that strayed into Latvian territory earlier this month. The political crisis unfolded less than six months before general elections planned for October.
The immediate trigger was an incident on 7 May, the second drone incursion into Latvia since the start of 2026, when two drones entered Latvian airspace and struck an empty oil product storage facility near Rēzekne, a city in eastern Latvia close to the Russian border. Both Latvia and Ukraine acknowledged the UAVs were most likely Ukrainian drones intended to strike targets inside Russia that had been thrown off course by electronic jamming. A third drone briefly crossed into Latvian airspace before leaving. There were no casualties, but residents complained that authorities had been slow to respond — the cell broadcast alert system was reportedly not activated until an hour after one of the drones had already come down.
Silina moved to fire Defence Minister Andris Spruds, a member of the left-leaning Progressives party, citing both his handling of the incident and broader shortcomings in Latvia's defence sector. She noted that Latvia spends 5% of its GDP on national defence — one of the highest rates in NATO — and that this demanded "clear results." Spruds had already pre-empted the dismissal by calling his own press conference and announcing his resignation, while publicly accepting responsibility for the failure to intercept the drones at the border. The Progressives, rejecting Silina's account of events, withdrew from the coalition in protest, stripping the government of its parliamentary majority. Silina's coalition had also included the liberal New Unity party and a conservative agrarian party. The crisis was compounded on Thursday morning when the agriculture minister and a senior state official were arrested in connection with a separate corruption investigation involving alleged illegal state subsidies to the timber industry.
Silina, who had led Latvia's government since September 2023, struck a defiant tone in her resignation statement. "Political windbags have chosen a crisis," she said, adding: "I am resigning but I am not giving up." President Edgars Rinkevics announced he would meet with representatives of all parliamentary factions on 15 May to begin consultations on forming a new government.
The episode highlights the acute security anxieties felt across the Baltic states — Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia — which share borders or close proximity with Russia and have been among Ukraine's most steadfast supporters since Moscow's full-scale invasion in 2022. Latvia reintroduced compulsory military service in the aftermath of that invasion. The repeated drift of Ukrainian drones into Baltic airspace, also including incidents in Estonia, has fuelled public debate about whether the region's air defences are adequate — and, as this crisis demonstrates, carries significant political consequences even when no one is hurt.