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 Nicholdwaite.
John, thank you, mart Ruther, thank you for talking to Greenberg once again. Can we begin with all these incursions by Russian fighter flight fighter jets, some Russian drones into NATO space and Poland, Estonia, Denmark, those sort of areas have been hit by this, and we 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. That is that your understanding as well, or you don't know well.
The type of this type of messaging should taking place all the time, of course informal, so we're 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 pilers know exactly what to do for fifty years now from the Soviet days. Now is 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 decided that there's no imminent threat, and then they will escort them outside of the airspace.
I think the message has gone through to the extent that you don't expect the Russians to do it again.
But again there's a bit of risk that we're all getting now thinking hey, we need new rules or whatever the rules are there. We have our military people, our military commanders, have all the rules in at the hand, have all the authorities they need to deal with these situations. And this is not new. We are doing this for tens of years, decades, and we have seen this from
the Russians. It is reckless, it's unacceptable. We're still assessing whether the drones are Bodentt and the fighter jets in Estonia, whether it was intentional, we don't know yet. Still being assessed, of course. With Copenhagen. With Denmark, I spoke with the Prime minister this morning. There, we're also still assessing who was behind it. Also very worrying what happened there obviously, and they're all working on that. But when it comes to these fighter jets, that's not new. It's bad, it
should stop. But our pilers know what to do, and if necessary, they can do the ultimate.
It's a difference, though, isn't the Russian With the fighter jets, there seems to be quite a clear policy, as you've said, that's been for years, Russian jets should not come into NATO space. The drones is much more complicated because there tend to be lots of them. They're hard to defend against it, and there you seem to have a kind of there's the intentionality problem that you pointed out, you know,
is this on purpose, isn't it? But another big one is just having the kit to deal with 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 destructive pilot last week who took down or two weeks ago now, who took down these drones in Poland at thirty five pilots, and it is exactly what we need to do because first of all, we have to prioritize the safe two of our people. But you're right, it's not sustainable that you will take down one thousand or two thousand dollars costing drones with missiles which cost you maybe half a million or a
million dollars. So this is why our Supreme Adot 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.
No, this is not something you know, you've only done it for a year or something you look at you look back. Do you think later in some ways 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 j Tech, 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 traditions in day at an incredible speed, innovate during warfare, so we can learn from them. We will adapt as soon as possible, and in the meantime, if there are drones in our airspace, we will still take them down. We've all protect our people.
It's part of the problem here that actually is 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 what they can do and also to help us supplying that technology, which you're right, of course, after 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 SARIA the technology ourselves. So this is all being processed now, so we we are really stepping up, and this is why we launched Eastern Centry last week.
Eastern cent he's there to move from policing to from air policing to air defense on the entire Eastern flank with the traditional means, but also figuring in as soon as possible these latest anti drone technologies.
Quite another thing which happened this week because that Donald Trump seemed to well, he did change tag and he suddenly said it's possible for Ukraine to get back all its land. What do you what do you read into that?
Well, I think that was a fantastic post he made two days ago. He mentioned Russia as a he called him a paper tiger. And then the Russians for a full day. Have you seen that a full day saying we are a lot of paper tiger. We are there. Hey, if you are a bear, everybody will notice, so you don't have to explain that. So probably they are not. Probably the President was right, and it's and and it hit the nerve in the Kremlin and potentially at the highest levels in the Kremlin.
But there's an issue there with the ask time I looked. You know, Russia is still advancing on the ground in Ukraine.
Very slowly, very slowly, and they have lost by now a million people that's are seriously wounded. They lose now in one month, for the Soviet Union lost in ten years in Afghanistan. This is what now the Russians are losing in one month. This is not sustainable with only
very little to show for it. The problem is that whilst they are not competent to get this done, that still if you have a president willing to sacrifice one million people, we have to prepare ourselves for what they are willing to do without lots of success, but still trying to create difficulties for us. And first of all, we have to make sure that Ukraine is in the strongest possible position. So I really command what the president
for President Trump is doing. He also opened the floodgates, as you know a couple of months ago of you as kid both lethal and nonle sol into Ukraine, paid for by allies. So we're working on that. This is crucial stuff Ukraine needs. So in that sense, I think us, the President, Europe, NATO working together is a strong signal.
It's the weakest point of Russia actually the economy, with a lot of reports coming out saying the Russian economy is not We've done some the Russian economy doesn't seem as strong. Do you think there is a sense that Putin is perhaps stronger on the battlefield than he is economically, and.
He's not so in the battlefield either, because if you have so many losses and you only gain a couple of square miles a week. I mean, nothing to show for it, but I think you're absolutely right. The economy is in difficulty. We see the long lines now waiting at the gasoline stations to fill up the cars. We have seen the Russians deciding to bring down the exports to it comes like India and Trachea, oil and gas,
et cetera. And this is also because Ukrainians are successful in tracket seeing the Russian oil infrastructure and it is famously difficult to get it oil refinery up running again after that has been hit by missile or drones. So the Ukrainians are good at this. I always thought that they had this fantastic central banker somehow in Russia who was able to paper over the problems, but I think she cannot any longer. And it's now the cracks are
showing and the Russian economy is in difficulty. You're totally right.
There's been talk of, you know, from the Ukrainian side of the Russian should prepare to live in shelters like they do. Does that again, Russian the Russians should prepare to live in shelters, if you know, the NATO starts applying more long range weapons that Ukraine would be able to hit deeper into into Russia.
Well, I should not speculate about that, I think in public media. But obviously we are in constant discussion the Americans, Europe and allies with the Ukrainians 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 publicy worry it 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 material 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 US supply the Czech ammunition initiative, you have the dangers in Lithuanians who started this initiative to directly sourced from the Ukrainian defense industrial base. There are some indicators now saying that Ukrainians are able to up to fifty sixty percent a source what they need from their own defense in your base. And then on the people side I discuss there's also as the president President Selenski
this week again they're not doing that bad. They really are catching up and keeping close close to what the Russians are doing. Russians are losing four to five times more people on the battlefield than the Ukrainians are because of this crazy way of warfare the Russians have decided to do.
That's another big thing that happened this week with Frederick Mertz just said that it's fine to take maybe one hundred and forty billion euros of frozen Russian assets, which hitherto Germany has 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 and by Thesible Competitor. Yeah, sorry, sorry, but next time people will no doubt publish it the Economy History or SORR yeah Bloomberg and no, no, 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 delta than the EU side. Of course, I have a very close relationship with originavon the LAI, the President's up and Commission, so this is not something I'm dealing with every day, the Russian assets, but of course I followed it closely and I thought, hey, this is a development and this is probably a way to work around some of the illegal problems to get access to this.
Is that what you spend a lot of your time trying to do is that that interconnection between money which Ukraine needs, weapons which then as you said countless times, are all spread spread out across different parts of NATO. And then finally that question of the front line.
Yeah, I mean in the endfl what we need to achieve is for Ukraine to sustain in the fight and to be in the best possible position when peace stolls would start. That is weapons, that's money. Is of course making sure that when it comes to the pressure on the Russians that when it comes to sanctional that is also more on the eosite than NATO. But I'm really impressed by what persons from the Layer is doing now working with Security Best and the White House, but putting
more pressure on the Chinese. Of course, we have the discussion on cutting off the oil supply from Russia into Hungary, Turkey, Slovakia. Not easy, but all working on it because we want to make sure that Russians don't have access to either any of these sources of income. By the way, the shadow fleet also important, So we're working on all that. Sometimes nature and the leads sometimes to EU and E leeds and also in close conjunction with the personal Trump and his team.
One sort of flip side of what Trump said this week becase it would seem that a peace steel in Ukraine as far away as ever is that you're reading of it.
The problem is, of course that he and I was I'm really commended for that. He broke the deathlockuist put In, he brought, he started to dialogue with him, He had the meeting in Alaska testing him. But somehow we have not been able yet to get them to the table. And there should be a table not in Russia, but somewhere in the world where at least Celensky and Putting are sitting down and discussing the difficult issues how to end the war. And Celensky is willing to do that.
Put In clearly is not, and that means that we have to up the pressure on the Russians to make sure that he will come to the table. And I'm fairly confident we will get there at a certain moment, and the President's efforts here are extremely important.
You've been very good at praising and keeping Donald Trump on side. Do you think that you've changed fundamentally the way he looks at NATO? I mean, people, that was when you came in. There were a lot of doubts and again Stoltenberg was a very good leader as well, but there were a lot of doubts about how Trump saw NATO. Do you think fundamentally now he is committed to NATO in a way that.
You know it was not. It was absolutely clear what he felt. I mean, I was Prime Minister when he was forty five and we discussed as many times. He was always in favor of NATO and m forty seven I was a favor of NATO. But he has an expectation. Expectation was, hey, you guys in Europe, you have to spend the same year spending Stalton were He started this process in NATO assessing what do we need to be able to do if Article five would ever be triggered.
This is called the capability targets each country what do they have to deliver? This led to the three point five heart defense spending one point five DEFENI later spending this complete this total of five percent. When Indy Hague, under President Trump's leadership, Native was able to agree on this five percent, This irtant was dumb, was gone. This was there since eiz an Hour. He was able to solve it, so I think it was one of his biggest foreign policy successes. So he also got it coming
to NATO. But this irtant, this big pebble in the shoe, was there and it had to be removed.
I think arguably NATO is as strong as it has been for several decades since the end of the Cold War. If you look at all the things we've talked about, you have countries you know, saying they will take on Russian train planes coming to their space. You have people pushing up towards that five percent target. You have a much more committed Europe in terms of what is happening. Do you feel much more confident about NATO? Now?
Yes, I always thought com about NATO, but I think President Trump coming into office has really helped because I spoke to many countries in November December, not yet on two percent, to all two percent from twenty fourteen. We had to achieve by twenty four to twenty five. We told me, oh, difficult, Mark, I'm not sure we can
get How do we do this? And then Trump came into office in January and from Farauary in March the phone calls came in all countries, not in two percent, So how are we going to get to two percent
this year? And then we came to the Natro summit and we were able with thirty two countries to agree on the five percent, not only because Trump needed this as a win to show to the American people that we are equalizing the spending between the US and Europe, but also in Europe and in the US and in Canada because we have to defend ourselves against the Russian threat. The Chinese challenge is there, and we cannot do that to two percent. We have to get to that five percent.
Rich It's very generous and perhaps shrewd of you to share the credit for this with President Trump. But thank you for talking to Limberg.
Thanks you over having me. It is a real pleasure