Ian Bremmer

The bomber fleet is the oldest of the three legs of the stool.

And it's really the least important.

It's the it's the last resort.

It's what happens if there was a first strike by the Americans and NATO, and you take out some of the most advanced capabilities and the bombers have been scrambled, they're in the air and they're meant to be something that you can deploy if you have to, in the worst case.

So it's a second strike capability is the way they think about it.

Now, those bombers are Soviet era,

The Russians are not making them anymore.

And they certainly can't do a lot of the replacement parts now because so much of their present military efforts are going towards fighting a very different kind of war.

But these strategic bombers are important.

They are a part of ongoing arms control agreements.

They are clearly part of the nuclear balance that the U.S.

has against the Russians and NATO has against the Russians.

And if the Ukrainians can do this and clearly Ukraine wanted to take out all of them.

The intention was to basically cripple one leg of the nuclear triad and also one leg of Russia's ability to use conventional missiles against Ukraine.

And Ukraine is running low of Patriot missile battery artillery.

And so therefore, they need to have successes there.

That's why they don't have so many of them.

And that's why they can't rebuild them.

So just to give you like kind of some context on that.

Ukraine is ready for everything at this point.