This story is a part of the weekly newsletter about economy, defence, and tech in the eastern flank of Nato, How we cee it.
As runners scrambled to push for their best times at the Riga Marathon, they passed a man holding a seemingly supportive message: “You’re Running Better Than The Government.”
The joke wouldn’t normally make international news, were it not for the fact that the man holding the sign was Andris Šuvajevs, the head of the Latvian Progressive Party, whose government was in the middle of a collapse.
The upheaval is the result of long-simmering conflicts within the governing coalition, topped off by recent drone crashes in the country.
Air alerts have become a fairly regular occurrence in all three Baltic states. As Ukrainian drones fly to deliver attacks in the richest regions of Russia, namely St Petersburg and Moscow, they sometimes fall victim to Russian electronic warfare and stray from their route.
