Latvia's National Armed Forces (NBS) moved the active phase of their nationwide "Namejs 2026" defence exercise into Riga on September 16, 2026, bringing soldiers, checkpoints, unmanned aircraft, and military vehicles into the capital through September 20, per LSM. The exercise itself is far larger than its Riga leg: it started September 2 and runs across the whole country until October 8, with about 12,000 Latvian troops and reservists taking part, per LSM's September 2 report. Allied units from Sweden, Denmark, and Lithuania, plus observers from Ukraine's Armed Forces, are also participating, per LSM's September 14 report.
What the Riga phase involves
Residents in Pētersala-Andrejsala, Brasa, Čiekurkalns, Teika, Mežciems, Torņakalns, Ziepniekkalns, Bolderāja, Daugavgrīva, and Sala should expect a visibly larger military and National Guard presence, training checkpoints, anti-mobility barriers, and low-level flights by drones and military aircraft, with possible short-term restrictions on traffic and movement, per LSM's September 16 report. LSM's September 14 report describes the broader exercise as training rapid mobilization and infrastructure protection - drills built around how Latvia would respond if it needed to defend its own territory, not a deployment tied to any single external event.
The exercise predates the week's other developments
Namejs 2026 was announced and began on September 2, two weeks before NATO fighters shot down a Belarus-origin drone over Lithuania's Kaišiadorys district on the night of September 14-15, before Russia's drone strike near the diplomatic train carrying former CIA Director David Petraeus and Boris Johnson at Yahodyn on September 13, and before a Russian warship fired flares at a Danish military helicopter in the Baltic Sea on September 14. None of Latvia's own statements ties the Riga phase's timing, or the exercise as a whole, to any of these events, and Namejs's national schedule was fixed well before any of them occurred. Riga's city council published the same nationwide September 2 to October 8 dates in its own public notice, matching NBS's own timeline.
The exercise's active Riga week does overlap with a run of Baltic and border security stories that AirVeto has covered separately: the Pratkūnai drone shootdown, Lithuania, the Belarus and Lithuania border drills, and the Baltic Sea flare incident off Gedser, Denmark. Latvia's own drills also run concurrently with, but separately from, the Belarus and Lithuania exercises already underway on the other side of the region. AirVeto is not aware of any official statement connecting Namejs to Petraeus's presence in the region on September 13, or to any of the incidents above, and states none here.
Allied participation is part of the exercise's design, not a response
Sweden, Denmark, and Lithuania sending troops, and Ukraine sending observers, is consistent with Namejs's stated purpose as a nationwide state-defence exercise rather than a reaction to a single week's events - per Riga's city council, Namejs training has been ongoing throughout Latvia since 2014. LSM's coverage does not report any change in scale, allied participation, or objectives attributable to the week's other developments.