The politician calls “the inability of the Ministry of Defense to explain what happened directly” a tragedy.
“In my opinion, the minister of defense should not have hidden or tried to push under the carpet what happened,” said the chairman of the Daugavpils council, adding that the information was necessary both for the society as a whole and for local governments, whose chairmen mostly also lead the civil defense commissions.
According to him, until now no one from the MoD has officially contacted any municipality of Latgale and any civil defense commission and has not provided any information about the incident. Elksniņš quipped that the heads of local governments also have to read news headlines and watch the press conference of the MoD.
“Look, it’s a tragedy that indicates the inability to take on crisis management and crisis communication,” a confident politician, explaining that municipalities would also like to receive information on whether any measures should be taken in their administrative territory in connection with the incident, what would be the recommendations of the MoD regarding with communication with residents.
LETA already wrote that the unmanned aerial vehicle that fell in Gaigalava parish of Rēzekne region was a “Shahed” type drone equipped with explosives, the leadership of the National Armed Forces (NBS) announced at the press conference on Monday.
After the fall, the NBS deactivated the drone, and an in-depth analysis of it is currently underway. After landing, the drone’s warhead had not exploded.
According to the NBS management, the information obtained so far shows that the drone’s arrival in Latvia cannot be regarded as an open military escalation against Latvia and that the target of the drone was not Latvia. During the entire incident, the Latvian Defense Forces monitored the situation in cooperation with NATO partners.
When asked what testified that the drone was not hostile to Latvia, the NBS commander Leonids Kalniņš replied that no open escalation was detected, moreover, monitoring the situation does not mean that the drone was detected only at the place of fall. At the same time, there was extensive information provided by foreign partners, and taking into account the analysis of the received information, the NBS concluded that the aircraft was not deliberately aimed at Latvia.
The NBS commander did not comment on how much explosive the drone had moved, and what the consequences would be if it had fallen on a residential building. At the same time, everyone can see the parallels with what is happening when Russia uses these aircraft in the war in Ukraine.
Asked to clarify why the aircraft was not shot down, the NBS commander replied that the NBS monitored the situation from the very beginning, when the aircraft was spotted in a neighboring country. There are procedures in place to make a decision to destroy a flying object, and these procedures include that the NBS must be fully satisfied that it is not a civilian object, such as a hang glider. At the same time, you must be sure that this object complies with the destruction procedure.
There are also other possibilities, such as the forced landing of an aircraft or the use of electronic warfare methods. Latvia has electronic warfare tools at its disposal, but in general they are still in the development stage in the world, and the Latvian border defense does not have many of these devices at its disposal, Kalniņš pointed out. “We don’t shoot right or left on the border. There have been cases when Belarusian aircraft have entered Latvia unintentionally,” emphasized the NBS commander.
2024-09-11 17:12:33