{"id":568565,"date":"2026-08-17T10:11:14","date_gmt":"2026-08-17T07:11:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/reform.news\/?p=568565"},"modified":"2026-08-17T11:26:27","modified_gmt":"2026-08-17T08:26:27","slug":"drone-shot-down-in-latvia-flew-from-belarus-defense-ministry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/drone-shot-down-in-latvia-flew-from-belarus-defense-ministry","title":{"rendered":"Drone Shot Down in Latvia Flew From Belarus \u2014 Defense Ministry"},"content":{"rendered":"<div id=\"fb-root\"><\/div>\n<p>The drone <a href=\"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/nato-fighters-shoot-down-drone-in-latvia\">shot down<\/a> over Latvian territory on Friday flew in from Belarus, Latvian Defense Minister <strong>Raivis Melnis<\/strong>\u00a0said in an interview with Latvian Television, <a href=\"https:\/\/rus.lsm.lv\/statja\/novosti\/proisshestvija\/17.08.2026-sbityi-v-latvii-dron-priletel-iz-belarusi-ministr-ne-vidit-xalatnosti-v-preznix-zakupkax-protivodronnogo-oborudovaniya.a659105\/\">LSM<\/a> reports.<\/p>\n<p><i>&#8220;The drone entered from the territory of Belarus, and a decision was made to shoot it down. As in the case of the previous drone that was shot down, any flying unmanned aircraft poses a threat to our society, residents and their property.<\/i><\/p>\n<p><i>We cannot be sure that these drones do not contain warheads or explosives, and a drone, in principle, can be deflected in various ways by electromagnetic interference during flight, remains uncontrollable, and such a drone, as I have already mentioned, can pose a danger to our residents. It can fall or crash into any building in the city. That is why the decision was made to shoot down the drone&#8221;<\/i>, he said.<\/p>\n<p>According to him, fragments of the unmanned aircraft have already been found in Balvi Municipality. They are being examined to establish the drone\u2019s origin.<\/p>\n<p>The minister also promised that drones that enter Latvian territory would continue to be shot down.<\/p>\n<p><i>&#8220;The risk of drones arriving remains. Ukraine, defending itself, continues to launch drone strikes against Russian territory, while Russia is taking retaliatory measures&#8221;<\/i>, Melnis said.<\/p>\n<p>It should be noted that over the weekend, Belarusian Air Force and Air Defense Forces Commander <strong>Andrei Lukyanovich<\/strong> said that interaction with Latvia on relevant issues had recently been <a href=\"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/commander-of-belarus-air-force-and-air-defense-forces-says-interaction-with-latvia-has-resumed\">resumed<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The drone shot down over Latvian territory on Friday flew in from Belarus, Latvian Defense Minister Raivis Melnis\u00a0said in an interview with Latvian Television, LSM reports. &#8220;The drone entered from the territory of Belarus, and a decision was made to shoot it down. As in the case of the previous drone that was shot down, [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":119,"featured_media":568564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_sharing_image":{"poster":"https:\/\/reform.news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/6a82c5b777528.jpg","width":1200,"height":630,"template":"691142dd","mode":"auto"},"_sharing_image_fieldset":{"dTVKfmI95PYT":"Drone Shot Down in Latvia Flew From Belarus \u2014 Defense Ministry"},"footnotes":""},"categories":[142339,142338,143284],"tags":[143118,143171],"class_list":["post-568565","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-main","category-news","category-world","tag-belarus","tag-latvija"],"wps_subtitle":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568565","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=568565"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/568565\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/568564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=568565"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=568565"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reform.news\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=568565"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}