Riga is scrambling to restore public trust and secure its fragile airspace.
On Thursday last week, several drones entered Latvian airspace over the picturesque towns of Balvi and Ludza, near the country’s eastern flank and roughly an hour’s drive west of Russia.
The Latvian Defence Ministry issued a statement in the hours following the event, stating that two of the unnamed aerial vehicles had crashed while another caused a brief fire at an oil depot. No one was injured, but residents said they only received a text warning them of the drones 60 minutes after the incident occurred.
Latvia’s political leadership has acknowledged that the unnamed aerial vehicles were Ukrainian in origin, but diverted into Latvia from Russia. They also admitted that the defence ministry had committed massive failings in the detection and response.
“The drone incident that occurred this week clearly demonstrated that the political leadership of the defence sector has failed to fulfil its promise of safe skies over our country,” Latvia’s Prime Minister Evika Siliņa said in a post on X on Sunday.
