Host: A drone launched in one country's war brings down a government in another. Latvia's prime minister is out, Romania finds another projectile on its soil, and Washington tightens the screws on Russian oil. This is Europa Daily.

Host: Latvia's Prime Minister Evika Silina has resigned, triggering the collapse of her coalition — and the cause traces directly back to the war in Ukraine. Ukrainian drones strayed into Latvian territory and exploded at an oil facility. The Latvian army admitted it failed to detect the drones as they crossed from Russia. Silina blamed her defence minister, Andris Spruds, for not developing anti-drone systems quickly enough, and sacked him. In response, Spruds' Progressives party withdrew support from the government, leaving Silina without a parliamentary majority. President Edgars Rinkevics has now put forward opposition lawmaker Andris Kulbergs as the next prime minister. Several Russian and Ukrainian drones have come down in Latvia since Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine, fuelling public anxiety in the small former Soviet republic. Britain, of course, has troops deployed in the Baltic states as part of NATO's enhanced forward presence — so the question of how the alliance plugs these air-defence gaps is not an abstract one for the UK. Latvia is far from alone in facing them. In south-eastern Romania, an unexploded projectile was discovered in the yard of an uninhabited house in the village of Pardina, in Tulcea county. Romania's defence ministry confirmed the find but did not say where it came from. Romania shares a 650-kilometre land border with Ukraine, and Russian drones attacking Ukrainian ports on the Danube have repeatedly breached Romanian airspace. Fragments have fallen on Romanian soil as Ukrainian forces shoot them down. Last month, an explosive drone landed in a back garden in the city of Galati — the first time since the war began that such an incident damaged property in Romania. The leaders of NATO's fourteen eastern flank nations said this week that Russia's repeated violations of their airspace underline the urgent need to consolidate the alliance's air defences against missiles and drones. Meanwhile, the Trump administration allowed a sanctions waiver to lapse that had permitted countries including India to buy Russian seaborne oil. The waiver had been extended for a month to ease supply shortages linked to Iran's closure of the Strait of Hormuz. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had previously said he would not renew the general licence. Two senior Democratic senators, Jeanne Shaheen and Elizabeth Warren, had urged against renewal, arguing the waiver was providing revenue to Russia for its war in Ukraine with no evidence it was lowering fuel costs for American consumers. As of Saturday afternoon Washington time, no renewal notice had appeared on the Treasury website.

Host: From drones crossing borders to borders themselves being redrawn — at least in theory. Moldovan President Maia Sandu and Romania's Nicusor Dan want to reunite their countries. The two leaders are openly discussing the prospect, which would merge a non-EU state with an EU member. DW asks whether this is a realistic scenario. A Romania-Moldova merger would raise immediate questions about EU treaty law, since it would effectively bring Moldova into the union without a formal accession process. Then there is Transnistria, the breakaway region where Russian troops are stationed — a frozen conflict that any reunification would have to confront. Britain has backed Moldova's westward orientation and has security interests in Black Sea stability, so the implications reach well beyond Bucharest and Chișinău. The two countries share a language and deep historical ties; they were separated when the Soviet Union annexed what was then eastern Romania. But turning presidential ambition into political reality would require navigating not just domestic opinion in both countries, but the legal architecture of the European Union itself.

Host: In Italy, a man in his thirties drove a car into pedestrians in central Modena on Saturday, injuring eight people — four of them seriously. According to the BBC, passers-by gave chase and stopped the man. Investigators are still working out whether the driver acted deliberately. Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni called the incident "extremely serious." Details remain thin at this stage, and authorities have not confirmed a motive. What is clear is that the incident will sharpen attention on public-space security in European cities — a concern that has grown after vehicle-ramming attacks in Berlin, Nice, Barcelona, and indeed London. Counter-terrorism cooperation between British and European police forces has deepened precisely because of this shared vulnerability.

Host: And finally — Eurovision. Bulgaria's Dara has won the 70th Eurovision Song Contest, hosted in Vienna. It is Bulgaria's first victory in the competition. But as has become something of a pattern, the music was not the only story. The contest was again overshadowed by protests and a boycott over Israel's participation — a debate that played out prominently in British media too, given the BBC's role as the UK's broadcaster in the competition. DW described the event as the world's biggest live music contest — and one where the politics now rival the pop for attention. Eurovision remains one of the few cultural events that commands mass attention in more than forty countries simultaneously. Bulgaria's win shifts the spotlight towards south-eastern Europe, a region that has been at the centre of several of today's stories — from Romanian airspace violations to reunification talks with Moldova. But in Vienna, the sharpest divisions were not about eastern borders. The boycott debate cut across European broadcasters and audiences, turning what is determinedly billed as an apolitical Saturday night out into a mirror of the continent's most charged geopolitical arguments.

Host: That's Europa Daily. Governments fall, borders blur, and Eurovision still manages to be the most political thing on telly. See you next time.

Sources

• The Guardian Europe: Ukraine war briefing: US allows Russian oil sanctions waiver to lapse; unexploded projectile lands in Romania
• DW World: Bulgaria's Dara wins Eurovision Song Contest 2026 in Vienna
• DW World: Eight injured after car ploughs into crowd in Italy's Modena
• BBC Europe: Man drives car into pedestrians in Italy, injuring eight
• DW World: Could Romania and Moldova reunite?