Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
You're listening to TED Talks Daily, where we bring you new ideas to spark your curiosity every day. I'm your host, Elise Hume. On Sunday, we learned that Ukraine launched a surprise large-scale drone attack on Russia, which The Economist magazine has called Ukraine's most audacious operation on Russian territory to date.
To look past the headlines and understand what just happened, we're bringing you a special conversation from our original series, TED Explains the World.
Political scientist Ian Bremmer, president and founder of Eurasia Group and GZERO Media, sits down with TED's head of media and curation, Helen Walters, to talk about what this astonishing raid means for Russia and Ukraine, what might be next and more.
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Hello, everyone. Thank you for joining. It is Monday, June the 2nd, the day after Ukraine unleashed an astonishing drone raid deep inside Russia and in doing so essentially rewrote the rules of war. I'm Helen Walters.
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Chapter 2: What was the significance of Ukraine's drone attack on Russia?
I am the head of media and curation at TED, and I am joined to make sense of it all by Eurasia Group founder Ian Bremmer. Ian, thank you so much for joining us.
Helen, such a pleasure to be with you again.
Here we are. OK, so much is still emerging about what took place, but here's what I think we know. In an operation codenamed Spider Web, Ukraine launched a bunch of drones off trucks, which took out 41 of Russia's most strategic military planes. The Economist called it Ukraine's most audacious operation on Russian territory to date.
So tell us, what do we really need to know about what happened here?
Well, we don't know exactly how many planes were taken out. The Ukrainians claim 41. They, as antagonists in both sides of wars, always tend to maximize the numeric exploits. So we can confirm probably almost half of that number. It'll probably go up. We'll see. But the point remains the same. In three and a half years now of this brutal war,
this is by far the most spectacular strike that has been seen by either side this is david versus goliath and little ukraine proves that they have the ability with drones that cost between 300 and 400 dollars and only a couple hundred of them are able to take out individual strategic nuclear bombers that cost over $100 million for the Russians to build.
And by the way, which they don't have the military capability to build today. So we've never seen an asymmetric strike like this be pulled off against a major nuclear power.
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Chapter 3: How did Ukraine execute the surprise drone strike?
It's never happened.
and there are i think big implications there are big implications for war fighting going forward there's big implications for putin and what he decides to do and how he responds the future of the russia ukraine war there's big implications for the united states and the role that president trump is or is not going to play as a consequence and it is essential i think to get deep
under the hood around all of those things and not just rely on the, oh, my God, look at what just happened of the headlines.
I think the phrase asymmetric warfare is really key for us to understand here, as you say. So I was reading that this operation took about a year and a half to plan. It was obviously extremely daring.
But as we do try to understand the implications of what happened here, how do you think Ukraine actually managed to pull this off, playing, as you say, the David role in this David versus Goliath story?
The Ukrainians have been working to develop their own homemade military capabilities. I mean, you see how much Europe is now saying we need to move to three to 40, even 5% of GDP spend on defense. It's not existential for them. This is the only thing that matters for Ukrainians. It matters more than eating well. It matters more than educating your kids.
It's whether or not your country and therefore you have a future after the Russians invaded. And so they're putting everything they can into building military capabilities. And they don't have as many people and they don't have as much money, but they are better educated. And they also have access to a very capable global Ukrainian diaspora.
And I've met many young Ukrainian, ethnically Ukrainian technologists from Silicon Valley, from Canada, from Europe. who have worked with the Ukrainian military virtually and many who have traveled to Ukraine and resettled in Ukraine to help them there.
And that, in addition to some of the money that's been provided by Europe and the United States, has helped the Ukrainians to build a world class, perhaps Israel would be also probably one or two, one of the best drone capabilities, military drone capabilities in the world. And that is exactly what just happened.
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Chapter 4: What are the implications of asymmetric warfare in modern conflicts?
And they also don't recognize Russia's invasion of Ukraine. They don't recognize the annexation of four Ukrainian districts that the Russians have now put into their constitution as a basis of their negotiating platform. They don't recognize the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014.
They say that it is the territorial integrity of Ukraine that has sway, and they've said that at the United Nations General Assembly on many occasions. Because it's consistent with their policy of Taiwan, which the Chinese see as an indelible part of the Chinese nation and the Chinese state. So all of that is to say the Putin-China relationship is very strong.
Trump's idea that he was going to pull a reverse Nixon and get the Russians to align with him over Xi Jinping was insanity and never going to happen. And his own advisors, most of them knew it, but were unprepared to tell Trump the truth about it because he doesn't like it when people disagree with him. And as a consequence, that relationship is not going anywhere. But again,
When it comes to things that the Russians could really do to undermine China's position globally,
Back in the beginning of the war in the first year, when it was looking more likely that Russia would use a tactical nuke in Southeast Ukraine because they were losing lots of territory, the Americans warned the Russians under Biden that if that were to happen, the United States would directly engage in military strikes against Russian military targets.
They said that directly through intelligence channels. And they also told the Chinese and the Indians and China and India both at the head of state level told Putin, you have to absolutely not use a nuke. And the American position I think has changed dramatically from Biden to Trump on this. I fear has changed dramatically because the deterrent is weaker.
But I'm not at all convinced that India and China are less worried about it as a consequence.
So you mentioned the peace talks, which strangely, I don't know how much you think this was all timed. Obviously, the operation was a year and a half in the making. The peace talks ended a couple of hours ago today. They ended pretty inconclusively, it seems. Do you think peace talks, new peace talks will happen as a result of this?
Or what kind of negotiations do you think we should look for in the coming weeks?
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