Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
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Bloomberg Audio Studios, podcasts, radio, news. Welcome to our Bloomberg audiences across television and radio. A big focus on the United Nations General Assembly here in New York and a big focus on the skies over Europe. Joining us right now is the Secretary General of NATO, Mark Ruda. Joined right now by Bloomberg's Editor-in-Chief, John Micklethwaite. John.
Thank you.
Thank you. Mark Reuter, thank you for talking to Bloomberg once again. Great to be here, to be on the show. Can we begin with all these incursions by Russian fighter jets and Russian drones into NATO airspace? Poland, Estonia, Denmark, those sort of areas have been hit by this.
And we have a report today that Britain, France and Germany have told the Russians that if that happened again, NATO, particularly with the jets... would shoot them down. Is that your understanding as well, or you don't know?
Well, this type of messaging is taking place all the time, of course, informal, so not for me to comment, of course. But, hey, let's face it. We have trained and prepared for these situations, and our fighter jet pilots know exactly what to do for 50 years now, from the Soviet days to now with Russia. We have had these incursions before. They will assess the danger.
And if the danger is such that they feel they really have to take down the plane, then they can. But they can also decide that there is no imminent threat, and then they will escort them outside of the airspace.
I think the message has got through to the extent that you don't expect the Russians to do it again.
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Chapter 2: What recent incursions into NATO airspace are being discussed?
Exactly. As I understand it, what would happen at the moment is you might have to use a very expensive missile to shoot down a very cheap drone. Is there a kind of kit problem with this as well?
In the short term, yes. And by the way, I was very proud of the Dutch fighter pilot Jas Wiek, who took down, or two weeks ago now, who took down these drones in Poland, an F-35 pilot. And it's exactly what we need to do. Because first of all, we have to prioritize the safety of our people.
But you're right, it is not sustainable that you would take down $1,000 or $2,000 costing drones with missiles which cost you maybe half a million or a million dollars. So this is why our Supreme Island Commander in Europe, together with the colleague working on transformation, all of us in NATO are rapidly developing the technologies, learning from the Ukrainians.
And we will start to apply that new technology over the coming weeks and months to make sure that next to the more traditional way to deal with this, we also have this drone interceptor technology at our hands.
You've only done it for a year or something. You look back, do you think NATO in some ways has been slow to react to the new reality of drone warfare?
I don't think so, because we have this joint center together with Ukraine, JTEC, which is based in Poland, where we take all the lessons from the Ukraine war. Ukraine being in war is two or three weeks ahead of the Russians, and they, at an incredible speed, innovate during warfare, so we can learn from them. We will adapt as soon as possible.
In the meantime, if there are drones in our airspace, we will still take them down. We will protect our people.
It's part of the problem here that actually it's Ukraine which is really good at making these things, but they're the people who most need them. So for the rest of NATO, it's hard to source this kind of kit.
Well, the Ukrainians are proud, of course, of what they can do and also to help us supplying that technology. But you're right, of course, they have to prioritize their own safety. But we have also other ways, of course, to get our hands on this type of kit. So we're working on that, also developing, where necessary, the technology ourselves. So this is all being processed now.
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Chapter 3: How does NATO respond to threats from Russian drones?
How can we help you best? And all options are always on the table. But obviously, we should not... speak so much about that in public.
Do you worry at all just on the battlefield going back to that? Yes, it's very obvious the Russians are losing huge amounts of people, but they still have managed to replenish them. The Ukrainians have that problem with the amount of materiel they have, partly the weapons you've talked about, also getting enough people to go forward. That problem about recruiting
young soldiers this is the first time ever anyone's ever tried to fight a war with old soldiers yeah but first of all it comes to the weapons with the the u.s supply the czech ammunition initiative you have the danes and lithuanians who started this initiative to directly source from the ukrainian defense industrial base there are some indicators now saying that ukrainians are able to up to 50 60 percent
source what they need from their own defense industrial base. And then on the people side, I discussed this also with President Zelensky this week again, they are not doing that bad. They really are catching up and keeping close to what the Russians are doing. And the Russians are losing four to five times more people on the battlefield than the Ukrainians are.
And because of this crazy way of warfare, the Russians have decided to do.
This other big thing that happened this week was Friedrich Merckx just said that it's fine to take maybe 140 billion euros of frozen Russian assets, which hitherto Germany's been pretty reluctant to touch, to use that to help finance. Is that a game changer?
Yes, I think I was reading that opinion piece. I think it was on the FT website. Refreshable competitor. Yeah, sorry. Next time he will no doubt publish it. The Economist, or sorry, Bloomberg, no doubt. But I think it is an important step. I must say, in the division of labor between NATO and the EU, this is more being dealt with at the EU side.
Of course, I have a very close relationship with Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission. So this is not something I'm dealing with every day, the Russian assets, but of course I follow it closely, and I thought, hey, this is a development, and this is probably a way to work around some of the legal problems to get access to the assets.
Is that what you spend a lot of your time trying to do, is that interconnection between money which Ukraine needs weapons, which then, as you said countless times, are all spread out across different parts of NATO. And then finally that question of the front line.
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