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.
This has resulted in numerous drone incidents across Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
But while Latvian neighbours such as Estonia have largely managed to shoot down incoming drones, Latvian armed forces have stuck largely to observing.
This has become an increasingly frustrating experience for many Latvians, especially after seeing the rampant increase in defence expenses in the country, which today reach nearly five percent of its GDP. Never before has more money been invested in defence in the whole of Latvia’s independent history.
Moreover, the Latvian ministry of defence has also boasted for several years about investing in Latvian drone capabilities and making the country something of a drone powerhouse. But the expenses have not seemingly translated into better protection for the people whose taxes pay for them.
“I’ve received those alert messages as well while being in eastern Latvia. People are truly concerned that the messages come and go, and the interception success rate is zero to this date,” says Maris Andžans, director of the Center for Geopolitical Studies in Riga. “It’s been shown that the ’emperor has no clothes’,” he adds.
“Latvia obviously has some good producers of land, sea and air drones, but that does not translate into anti-drone capabilities,” Andžans explains.
As Andžans explains, one thing that Latvians cannot comprehend is why the country’s defence seems to be so underwhelming, when the full-scale Russian war against Ukraine started more than four years ago, and the first Russian drone landed in Latvia already in autumn 2024. “No nation is perfect. But the government had time to prepare.”
All this tension erupted into a full-on political crisis in the country after two Ukrainian drones crashed into an abandoned oil depot in Latvia two weeks ago. The air defence did not intercept them, and the air alerts were sent to residents only after the crash had already happened.
The incident first forced the defence minister, Andris Spruds, to resign on 10 May.