Latvia's new government after the drone dispute

What did it take to replace a government in Riga? On 28 May 2026, the Latvian Saeima approved a four-party coalition led by prime minister Andris Kulbergs, after the administration of Evika Siliņa collapsed following disputes over the handling of suspected Ukrainian drones entering Latvian airspace.

What the vote settled

The vote closed a political crisis that had its origin in a security question rather than a budget or a policy programme. The disputes concerned how the authorities dealt with the suspected drones, and they were enough to bring down the previous administration. The incoming cabinet rests on four parties, so it depends on agreement among several partners.

The wider setting

The drones were suspected to be Ukrainian, which linked a domestic Latvian argument to the Russo-Ukrainian war. Days earlier, on 22 May 2026, a drone strike in Starobilsk, in Russian-occupied Luhansk Oblast, had drawn competing accounts. Russian president Vladimir Putin said it hit a dormitory and school, killing at least six people and injuring dozens, and blamed Ukraine. Ukraine's military called his comments manipulation and said it had struck a drone command unit in the city. Background accounts written later put the Russian Emergency Situations Ministry's toll at 21 dead and 42 injured, and noted that Reuters, the United Nations and other western countries could not independently verify claims about the incident.

The Starobilsk strike and the Latvian vote were separate events, and nothing links one to the other. Both, however, show how the war's drone activity was shaping politics and public argument well beyond the front line: in one case through contested accounts of a strike, in the other through the fall of a government.

Implications

For Latvia, the immediate result was a new prime minister and a four-party majority in the Saeima on 28 May 2026. How the new government would handle the airspace question was the next test, and the vote itself did not answer it.