{"id":541041,"date":"2026-05-11T07:45:53","date_gmt":"2026-05-11T04:45:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reform.news\/?p=541041"},"modified":"2026-05-11T10:41:39","modified_gmt":"2026-05-11T07:41:39","slug":"latvian-defence-minister-resigns-after-drone-incident","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/latvian-defence-minister-resigns-after-drone-incident","title":{"rendered":"Latvian Defence Minister Resigns After Drone Incident"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>On Sunday evening, Latvian Defence Minister <b>Andris Spr\u016bds<\/b> lost his post following last week&#8217;s drone incident. The drones entered Latvian territory from Russia. One of them crashed into an oil storage facility and damaged empty tanks.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier, Spr\u016bds had said he was ready to resign if the Saeima decided so. However, on Sunday evening, 12 minutes before the minister\u2019s scheduled press conference, Latvian Prime Minister <b>Evika Sili\u0146a<\/b> announced that she had decided to dismiss Spr\u016bds.<\/p>\n<p><i>&#8220;Defence Minister Andris Spr\u016bds has lost my confidence and the confidence of society. I have decided to demand the resignation of Defence Minister Andris Spr\u016bds. In the future, the defence sector must be led by a professional. Today I informed the minister and our coalition partners about this decision,&#8221;<\/i> she wrote on X.<\/p>\n<p>Later, Spr\u016bds himself said at a press conference that he was stepping down in order to <i>&#8220;protect the Latvian army from being drawn into a political campaign.&#8221;<\/i><\/p>\n<p>It should be noted that Sili\u0146a and Spr\u016bds belong to different parties within the ruling coalition.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>On Sunday evening, Latvian Defence Minister Andris Spr\u016bds lost his post following last week&#8217;s drone incident. The drones entered Latvian territory from Russia. One of them crashed into an oil storage facility and damaged empty tanks. Earlier, Spr\u016bds had said he was ready to resign if the Saeima decided so. However, on Sunday evening, 12 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sharing_image":{"poster":"https:\/\/reform.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/6a018836e7c47.jpg","width":1200,"height":630,"template":"691142dd","mode":"auto"},"_sharing_image_fieldset":{"dTVKfmI95PYT":"Latvian Defence Minister Resigns After Drone Incident"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[142338,143284,143090],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-541041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-world","category-politics"],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/119"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=541041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/541041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=541041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=541041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=541041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}