Latvian Prime Minister Resigns as Ukrainian Drone Crashes Expose NATO Defence Gaps

In eleven days, drone incidents hit five NATO countries on the alliance's eastern flank. Latvia's government fell. Finland closed its airspace. Lithuania's radars missed a drone that later crashed. Romania evacuated civilians near exploding debris. Estonia told Ukraine to install kill switches. NATO had no common protocol to govern any of it.

The Cascade

The sequence began on 7 May, when two Ukrainian long-range drones entered Latvian airspace from Russia and crashed near Rezekne, damaging empty oil tanks and prompting a military admission that sensors detected the drones but did not engage because "all safety criteria were not met." Defence Minister Andris Spruds was dismissed three days later. By 14 May, Prime Minister Siliņa had resigned.

On 15 May, Helsinki airport halted operations for several hours after drone threats, while fighter jets were scrambled over the Gulf of Finland coast. On 17 May, a suspected Ukrainian military drone crashed in Lithuania's Utena district. Lithuania's military later confirmed its radars had not detected the drone at all.

The Baltics treated each incursion as a political and security crisis. Romania, meanwhile, has quietly absorbed 14 Russian drone incidents in 2026 alone, three carrying live explosives. In April, a drone strike in Galați damaged buildings and forced the evacuation of 515 civilians. It drew little pan-European attention, a familiar pattern for smaller or less central member states when the damage is real but the political theatre is elsewhere.

Five Countries, Five Improvised Responses

NATO has no binding common protocol for drone spillover. Its rules of engagement do not apply to national armed forces operating on their own soil. Each government decides whether to intercept, warn, or consult. Operation Eastern Sentry, launched in September 2025, coordinates sensor networks and shares intelligence, but it does not set a common threshold for when a drone should be shot down or when an incident becomes an escalation.

That gap produced five national experiments at once. Latvia detected drones and did not fire. Lithuania detected nothing. Finland closed civilian airspace. Romania kept absorbing repeated hits while testing counter-drone systems at NATO's Eastern Phoenix exercise. Estonia's Defence Minister Hanno Pevkur chose a different route, publicly demanding that Ukraine build automatic kill switches into its drones, so they self-destruct when they leave their intended course.

The B9 summit, which brings together the nine NATO eastern flank states from Romania to Estonia, met in Bucharest on 13 May. Its joint declaration recognised "the urgent need to continue strengthening NATO's air and missile defence, including against UAS threats". UAS means unmanned aircraft systems, the military term for drones and their supporting systems. Hungary signalled "constructive abstention", refusing to endorse the agreed language. The declaration stated the problem. It did not create a procedure.

Who Absorbs the Cost

Ukraine says Russian electronic warfare systems are deliberately diverting its drones toward NATO territory. Latvia's military and Estonian intelligence broadly accept that explanation. But accepting the explanation does not remove the problem. The drones still land in NATO countries, and the political bill is paid in the capitals they hit.

Latvia shows how quickly that bill can arrive. NATO strategic communications expert Jānis Sārts warned that firing the defence minister over a drone incident "sends a signal to Russia that Latvia can be easily provoked". Lithuania's President Nausėda, watching Latvia's government fall, issued stern warnings about airspace sovereignty five days before a drone crashed on Lithuanian territory.

Sweden's Aurora 26 exercise on Gotland exposed the same weakness from another angle. Ukrainian drone operators acting as a Red Team repeatedly overwhelmed Swedish forces, and Defence Minister Pål Jonson acknowledged Sweden was "totally overrun". Ukrainian instructors judged Swedish drone technology inadequate, pointing in particular to reliance on GPS-guided systems that fail in electronic warfare conditions.

More than €12 billion in Baltic and Nordic counter-drone procurement is now under way, funded partly through the EU's SAFE instrument, a new emergency defence credit line allowing member states to borrow for military purchases. For Malta, which sits outside NATO but inside the EU's expanding defence financing machinery, the mechanism matters: Brussels is no longer only writing rules, it is helping member states buy military capacity.

Yet each country is buying its own systems, on its own timetable, with no guarantee that they will speak to each other when the next drone crosses a border. Eleven days of incidents created five national crises. They did not produce one collective response.