Latvian Defence Minister Spruds Resigns over Rezekne Drone Overspill Incident; Army Colonel Melnis Appointed

Two drones diverted from Russian targets by Russian electronic warfare entered Latvian airspace overnight on 7 May and crashed in the eastern Latgale region. One struck the Rezekne oil-storage facility approximately 40 kilometres from the Russian border, damaging four empty storage tanks and igniting a fire of approximately thirty square metres. Military drone-detection failed to identify the incoming aircraft; mobile warnings to residents were not dispatched until roughly an hour after impact. Spruds had pushed Riga's call for NATO to boost regional air defence ahead of the incident.

Silina appointed Latvian Army Colonel Raivis Melnis — the Latvian Defence Ministry's representative in Ukraine since 2025 — as successor. Melnis has served in the Latvian National Armed Forces since 1998, holds his military education in London, and joined the Prime Minister's office on 13 February 2026 as an unpaid adviser on military cooperation. He is the first uniformed officer rather than civilian political appointee to take the defence portfolio. Spruds stated on X that he resigned "in order to protect the Latvian army from being dragged into a political campaign".

The Rezekne sequence — Ukrainian-origin or Russian-redirected weapon overspilling onto NATO-flank state territory, responsible minister fired, firing breaking the governing coalition — is the political-consequence chain that Latvia is the first NATO-flank state to run to government resignation. The diagnostic is that NATO-flank governments are now politically exposed to consequences from the air-defence-coverage gap, not just operationally exposed to it. The compression of Riga's political tolerance band first registered in Signal No. 55.