俄升级对乌攻击，北约面临混合战与防空成本挑战

Joining us now is Alex Kokcharov, geoeconomics analyst for Bloomberg Economics, and colonel Wayne Sanders, senior defense analyst for Bloomberg Intelligence. Alex, I wanna start with you. First of all, can you update us on why this attack overnight in Kyiv was so bad? Was it a larger drone swarm than we've seen before? Is it because Kyiv is running out of those interceptor missiles, or is it just a combination of all of the above?

Probably, it's a combination of all of the above. We have seen Russia escalating its attacks on major Ukrainian cities, hitting infrastructure and logistics and industrial assets, and also hitting homes, residential areas across many cities of Ukraine. The likely Russian objective is to increase the cost and the damage to Ukraine in order to influence the the public opinion in Ukraine over how to end this war. Russia is still pushing with its maximalist demands in Ukraine, and the Kremlin's likely calculus is that by intensifying, escalating these strikes, it will push Ukrainians towards agreeing to these demands.

And, Alex, just thinking about that surprise visit to Moscow by CIA director Ratcliffe, president Trump said the purpose of the meeting was to find a solution to end the war in Ukraine. What would that look like right now? I think ending the war realistically would necessitate compromises and concessions, on both sides. We have seen that Ukraine has agreed to certain concessions, such as immediate ceasefires along the current line of contact, the current frontline, but we still do not see Russia agreeing to concessions.

Russia is still demanding what it has been demanding for years, including territorial control of the four Ukrainian regions, which it had declared annex back in autumn twenty twenty two despite controlling only partially. Colonel Sanders, wanna get your take on the trip as well because the president said, you know, it was a regular meeting and also that he's not worried about Putin striking a NATO country. But, Radcliffe's Russian intelligence counterpart said they discussed intelligence matters.

How unusual was this trip? I mean, these guys do have phones. They do communicate with each other. Why did he feel the need to go over there in person other than to get some some really good, borscht? I don't know. Well, historically, it's not it's not unheard of for, several of the the key intelligence community officials to go over there and have these discussions with counterparts. I think some of the face to face discussions allows it for to be a more intimate, conversation, if you will, especially when you're dealing with some of the higher classification things that you might wanna have a smaller party for than somebody who does a, you know, a voice teleconference or something, a video teleconference, and then they bring in all their staffs.

So at this point in time, it's something that might be a personal message from the president specifically to say, hey. Look. These are the areas in which our threshold lines this is where we're drawing the line in the sand for a boundary and saying, please don't cross this. This is where you're really putting us into a harmful position and then seeing where it actually comes from that. So Russia's response to this might be a little telling.

And what is your take on the strategic threat to NATO? I I to me, it seems like there's two outlying questions. Whether or not how you would define an article five attack. Right? It seems like the countries have decided they're not gonna quantify cyber as an article five worthy attack. They're not gonna quantify possibly an missile coming across the border into Poland and whether or not the president would support that and whether you think this is something Russia really wants to do right now.

Yeah. I think I think right now Russia is testing. They're doing it in lot of different ways. Right? So when you look at cyber drones, sabotage, I think they're also testing some of NATO's resolve. They're looking at it across and saying, can 32 countries respond as one? Or when I do this against Poland, if I go to Romania, whatever I'm doing, what type of response am I getting? How regional can I keep this specific threat, keeping it underneath the threshold of an article five?

I need to defend the rest of NATO type of attack. So I think that's a part of it. When you look at the 267 drone attack from, from yesterday, I think it does speak volumes too in terms of a message to NATO as well of saying, I have the ability once again to take a bunch of drones, but it wasn't just the drones. Right? There was a ballistic missile in there as well. So being able to say that I can mask this level of firepower, and so be aware of that when you look at your capabilities for counter drone as well as integrated air and missile defense.

And, Alex, a lot has been coming out of Europe as a whole, and your team has been writing about Russia's expanding use of, quote, hybrid attacks on European allies. How does that compare with what would be viewed as a conventional attack? Well, obviously, hybrid attacks are different because, they do have, a kinetic component. We have seen a number of explosions or arson incidents, but they are, below the threshold of conventional attacks.

Russia is using both anonymity and proxies to conduct these attacks, whether these are cyber or kinetic, and, it allows Russia to maintain plausible deniability and to claim that it has no connection to individuals or groups, which, are connected to these incidents. But we have seen an intensification of these attacks, especially on infrastructure such as railways, and airports, as well as defense manufacturing facilities across Europe, which are part of the wider Western efforts to, aid Ukraine and provide Ukraine with weapons and ammunition.

And, Colonel Sanders, Ukraine has learned a lot during this conflict, and, frankly, other militaries have learned from Ukraine as well. Can you talk to us about the types of munitions they have and when you compare that to the cost of something similar, for The US. I know you guys I I think our our TV viewers could see you have you have a fancy chart that breaks down the cost, between the two and what the Ukrainians can build, versus what it costs.

For example, a Patriot battery, I did not know, costs a billion dollars. Yeah. When you look at a Patriot battery of a billion dollars, but even the interceptors themselves, the, a PAC three interceptor for a Patriot system is about $4,100,000, sometimes up to 5 depending on who you're selling to. But you're dealing with a $9,000,000 interceptor that's going across, and you're shooting it down with something, you're you're you're shooting down something that might have cost Iran 20 to $30,000 specifically to make.

So when you put those together, you start looking at, like, RTX's Coyote Block two as a counter drone interceptor for only 120,000. Right? So there is this piece right now where the rest of the industry globally is looking at how do I do this? First phase is a $100,000 drone being shot down by a million dollar plus missile. Then you have a drone with an interceptor drone. Then you're looking at autonomous drones to autonomous interceptors, swarms, and AI enabled counterswarm.

All of these things are having to be built right now because the capabilities exist on the offense, and now we have to be able to scale up the ability for production for the defense. Yeah, Alex. Just wondering when we think about how this war has evolved and the different kind of things that Ukraine can use for its defense, what's going on with Patriots in Ukraine? Did they get that license? That deal seems to have kind of fallen apart.

And given their rise in this other technology, are they going to get to a point where they don't need those Patriots? Are they still really essential? Patriots are still essential in intercepting ballistic missiles coming from Russia. Ukraine has developed, domestic alt

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