Latvia’s Prime Minister Evika Silina resigned on Thursday after a key party in her coalition withdrew support in a row over Ukrainian drones that strayed into the Baltic nation.
The drones were on an attack mission across the border in Russia, and Ukraine said they crashed into Latvian territory on May 7 after being electronically diverted by the Russian military. One caused a fire at a disused oil storage site in eastern Latvia.
Silina on Sunday sacked her defence minister, Andris Spruds, over the affair. She said Latvia’s anti-drone systems had not been deployed quickly enough to counter the drone intrusions.
Spruds’s sacking prompted nine of his allies, fellow members of the left-wing Progressive party, to quit Silina’s ruling coalition, alleging she had made him a scapegoat.
Spruds formally resigned on Monday, and Salina proposed a military officer as his replacement, but the Progressive Party rejected him.
Their withdrawal left her government with just 41 seats in the 100-seat parliament, and opposition parties said they would call a vote of confidence just five months out from legislative elections.
In a further blow on Thursday, Armands Krauze, the minister for agriculture, from the Union of Greens and Farmers, was briefly detained as part of ongoing enquiries by anti-corruption body KNAB into state aid to firms in the forestry sector.
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Drone intrusions
Silina, from the Unity party, had been prime minister since September 2023.
