Iona Allan
Good afternoon, and welcome to this Member Question Time event. My name is Iona Allan, and I’m the Assistant Editor of The World Today – Chatham House’s World Today Magazine. Our autumn issue launched just a few weeks ago, so as members, I hope you’ve all had the chance to read it, and if not, are going to do so very soon.
So, I’m delighted to be joined today by Katja Bego, who’s a Senior Research Fellow at the International Security Programme here at Chatham House, who, among other things, is currently writing a book about the weaponisation of undersea communication cables. Today, however, she’s here to discuss the broader question of NATO readiness and resilience along the eastern flank. And we’re, of course, discussing this in the context of the spate of incursions in the region in recent weeks, from Russian decoy drones, which crossed the border into Polish airspace in early September, soon followed by further incursions into Romanian airspace, as well as the detection of Russian fighter jets over the Baltic Sea in Estonian airspace, and even reports of drones forcing the closure of Danish and Norwegian airports.
So, hopefully Katja can help us make sense of these provocations, how they fit into Russia’s broader pattern of aggression and grey zone tactics, and why NATO’s response doesn’t just raise doubts about its ability to defend against drone warfare but also calls into question the strength of its collective deterrence more broadly.
Before we start the discussion, I just want to let you know that we – this discussion is going to be on the record and is being recorded. You can tweet your thoughts and reactions using the hashtag, #CH_Events, and the handle, @ChathamHouse. Thank you to those who have already submitted your questions ahead of the event. You can still submit ones during the event using the Q&A function that will appear at the bottom of the Zoom feed now, and I’ll do my best to, kind of, to get through as many as possible.
We will move onto the Q&A quite shortly, but, first, I’d like to invite Katja to give her expert overview of the situation, outlining exactly how these threats are testing the alliances – the Alliance, and giving some, kind of, key considerations going forward. So, over to you, Katja.
Katja Bego
Thank you very much, Iona, also, for the introduction. So, yeah, so before we get started with some of the conversation, I want to give you a bit over – a brief overview of where we are now and, sort of, try to situate the discussion. So, as Iona already mentioned, I think it’s been a busy month. So, we’ve seen a number of incursions over the past few weeks that have, kind of, suggested maybe we are entering a bit of a new phase when it comes to the confrontation with Russia for the Alliance.
So, we, of course, first had some of these big drone incursions into Poland in early September, which saw 19 drones enter Polish airspace, kind of, a bit of a scrambled response, but I think, ultimately, quite an effective one by NATO. Saw Polish Dutch jets bring some of them down, not all of them, unfortunately, and also saw Poland, of course, trigger Article 4, which is a bigger step. And in response to that, then the Alliance came together and NATO launched a new race – mission called ‘Eastern Sentry’, which, basically, is really there, to kind of, put an emphasis a bit on some of the strong threats, but more largely be more present along – all along the eastern flank, both, kind of, from – in air and land, and in terms of naval presence. And this is a bit of a continuation of a earlier similar operation we saw launched earlier this year in response to some of these potential cable cutting incidents in the Baltic Sea, where we saw a similar thing launched called ‘Baltic Sentry’.
So, that was the first, sort of, incident, and the first time Article 4 was triggered or invoked. Then quite soon after, we saw an incursion into Estonian airspace by Russian fighter jets. Again, just in the case with this drone incident into Poland, these things are not necessarily that rare. Russia engages in this quite often, we see a lot of, kind of, flyers encroachment into NATO territory by Russian jets all the time, also way before the start of the full-scale invasion in Ukraine. Similarly, we’ve seen some drones make their way, one, two drones, into – after the start of the war, into Polish-Romanian airspace, but the scale appears a bit different.
So, with these drone incidents, 19 drones, that’s a lot, and in the case of this Estonian air incursion, their planes that were ultimately escorted out by Italian jets were in Estonian airspace for 12 minutes, which is, you know, usually you’re looking at a couple seconds, minute tops. So, that’s – again, felt a bit larger than some of these previous incursions. And again, we saw in this case Estonia invoke Article 4 of NATO, bring back the – bring together the Alliance. So, I think it’s maybe important to stress here that though it’s not quite an Article 5 invocation, of course, and we can discuss that later. Invocation of Article 4 is also quite rare. So, throughout the Alliance’s history, that’s only happened less than two ti – ten times, and now we’ve seen it twice within the span of a month, so it’s quite significant.
And then a third set of incidents, which looked a bit different, where it’s not quite so clear that – but seemingly quite likely, that Russia was involved with some of these quite strange, kind of, drone incidents, or, kind of, drone sightings over Denmark, Norway, and several other European or, kind of, NATO members now, as well. Which unfortunately, Danish authorities weren’t able to bring down one of the drones, so we don’t really have the details. We don’t still know where they were launched from, by whom, etc. This is, again, a, sort of, example where we saw airspace closed and whole airports shut down, and quite considerable fears about what this means, sort of, for the wider security of the Alliance.
Denmark considered invoking Article 4, they didn’t, but we do see a quite large response, which we can discuss a bit more large – in more detail later, around, kind of, Denmark considering closing its airspace now for these big meetings that are happening now, kind of, Eur – EU leaders meeting in Copenhagen today, European political community meeting tomorrow. Take note civilian drones now, there’s a lot of Police presence from a variety of different European countries, coun – other NATO members, kind of, offering assets, or, kind of, offering support to Ukraine – sorry, to Denmark in various ways in response to this.
So, this is, kind of, the context of these three incidents, and why I give you a little bit of my analysis of what this all means, is, like, I think we have the question of today’s session, “Is NATO able to defend its eastern flank?” And I think this raises two different questions, right? And there are, kind of, two different buckets and by different discussions. So, there is the bucket, and I think we’ll dis – focus our discussion there today, about whether NATO can respond to this, sort of, hybrid warfare, kind of, right on their subthreshold, or maybe some may say it is actual warfare at this stage? But these, kind of, more minor incursions that can be handled, like, how do we deter against this? How do we, kind of, strengthen the protections across the Alliance, and then particularly on the eastern flank, to respond to this? So, that’s one area of discussion.
But of course, a second question this raises, as well, is around the, sort of, wider deterrence posture of the Alliance as a whole and its ability to vent against the, sort of, more conventional all-out escalation with Russia. Which raises, also, kind of, the following question on that point, like, is that something – can NATO handle that today, and can NATO handle that in the absence of the United States? So, I think we could perhaps discuss that a bit more in the Q&A. I’ll focus a little bit more on these recent incidents and, kind of, counter-drone tactics how we can deter these, sort of, hybrid incidents. Very happy to talk about, kind of, US commitments, some of these questions around, say, protecting the Baltic, etc., as well.
Then briefly, ‘cause I can talk, as well, some of my observations about, kind of, the meaning of what we’ve seen over the past few weeks, you know, kind of, the longer term implications of it, the, kind of, five ideas, or maybe implications. The first one that I think is interesting is that despite quite a lot of people or, kind of, Analysts and peoples were complaining about maybe the relative weakness or meekness of Europe’s response, or any, kind of, the wider Alliance’s response. I would disagree with this a little bit. I actually think that NATO responded quite well to these incursions. You know, like, there were – Article 4 was invoked. There were serious commitments that followed in response to this Eastern Sentry, within days, new planes on the ground from France, from other countries. That’s quite forceful. We’ve seen a lot of leaders really speak out. We’ve seen a lot of quite serious NATO commitments. We’ll be speaking about this idea of the drone wall as well in a bit, which needs to take shape, but this is quite serious action, I think.
So, that would be my first, sort of, topic where I would, kind of, pushback around some of that narrative that we’re, again, letting, sort of, Russia just do this to us without much of a response, and that, you know, we’re sending messages of concern. I don’t think that’s quite the case here, and I think that it was probably quite right how this was handled with the resources available at the time. Whether that continues to be the right approach moving forward is another discussion.
Second bit of it, or, kind of, observation I think is interesting, which is very much linked, is that you can see the, kind of, Europeanisation of NATO, when we look at these – kind of, the response to these incidents. And that you, kind of, see this growing integration and a growing ability within the Alliance, which I don’t think is getting quite enough attention for European member states to take action on their own and to, kind of, shape a response that is quite forceful on their own without that necessarily needing to be mediated by the United States and them, kind of, pushing the envelope.
So, I think, well, this has already been a bit of a trend since 2022, and I think especially so since, kind of, the start of this year, where we do see the, kind of, the European members of the Alliance becoming a lot more comfortable about, sort of, pushing the frontiers of what NATO is willing to do, the, kind of, risks they’re willing to take. Where I think there was previously always this assumption that necessary, you know, it needed to be mediated by the United States, that the US had to be in charge of shaping operations like this. It’s important to note, to say, Eastern Sentry doesn’t involve the US, at all. The US has been a bit – they’ve made their commitments.
We can discuss what we think of those later, but, you know, they’re not really involved in this, and similarly, these earlier incidents that I mentioned in the Baltic Sea, which led to the launch of Baltic Sentry, similarly, no US involvement in that. So, there is something happening there. We see more solidarity, we see more integration and more comfort, a, kind of, comfort on the part of the major NATO members in the, kind of, countries, particularly in the Nordics and along the eastern flank, to take more forceful action on their own.
Third observation about the meaning of these incidents is that I think – about these, sort of, drone incursions, is that I think this is probably finally woken up, I hope at least, the Alliance to the risks that come with these, kind of, masked, kind of, drone incursions or drone attacks. This is something that’s not just a risk for the eastern flank, but for the Alliance as a whole. We’ve had some earlier examples. Example, Ukraine’s Operation Spidersweb earlier this year back in June, where we see these quite cheap commercial drones in those case, being smuggled into a country, basically, being – so, kind of, skipping the effect of needing, you know, to attack from a very long distance by just, basically, bringing drones to a location, and not seeing [inaudible – 12:15] incidents in Denmark, for example.
It’s really quite clear that this is something we don’t currently really have a very good response for, needs urgent action, and yeah, and a – quite a big rethink about how we think, kind of, of air defence and, kind of, the security, particularly, kind of, in the rear of the Alliance in terms of how we think about successful – kind of, the protection of critical infrastructure and the like. And, like, how do we, kind of, develop cost-effective solutions that can deal with this and do this with some urgency?
And then fourth observation – I only have five, so almost done – is that I think we – this has been described a lot as ‘hybrid warfare’. And I think it is, and we can discuss some of the political objectives behind some of this, which are obviously there, like, what Russia is trying to do and why it’s engaging, if it’s behind all of them, but engaging in this, kind of, activity. But I think we should also start to think of this really as, kind of, economic warfare, if that makes sense, or, kind of, traditional economic warfare.
The cost differential here is so enormous. You can send really cheap disposable single-use drones over the border and force NATO to response, you know, like, using F-35s at present. You can, in a relatively easy way, with quite sophisticated operations in Denmark, are probably known, but relatively low-cost shut a whole airport in a whole country, you know, one of the major airports of Europe, for hours at a time. So, this is just a very difficult, kind of, cost differential asymmetry at play here, and I think almost starting to think about this as really activities that are meant to also erode resources that are already quite scarce is quite important. And to really also think about strategies in terms of that minimise some of that costs and reduce maybe some of the incentives around this by making it cheaper to respond.
And then, final observation is that I think that maybe, you know, and again, we’ll get to that in a moment, we can discuss some of the strategic or, kind of, interest – strategic interests that Russia may have had for some of this, or some of, you know, like, divisions within the Alliance, they try to, kind of, affect by doing these, kind of, things. But I ultimately, think that we’ll come to think of these incidents is probably quite, like, large strategic blunders, actually, on the part of the Kremlin. ‘Cause what I think is quite interesting, and this is a little bit of a parallel, as well, with these submarine cable incidents, as well, earlier this year, these are weaknesses that were there that the Alliance wasn’t responding to very effectively, right?
So, these – like, we don’t really ac – most civilian airports and even most airbases and other ports, etc., do not have counter-drone systems in place. This is not something around which there was much collaboration, engagement, much investment, more so, of course, directly on the eastern flank, but throughout the Alliance. Now you’ve made it very clear that this is something that can be replicated, something that requires a response. You’ve allowed the Alliance to test out a response. If they keep doing this more often, as well, you know, you’re, basically, training people to respond to this, militaries to respond to this.
Same with these cable incidents. A lot of people in the community either maybe were warning about the vulnerability of submarine cables, you know, and the importance of some of these undersea in – energy infrastructure, as well, and the consequences of what would happen if you were to, like, destroy quite many of these at the same time. But not much was being done by governments, not much was happening in the way of investments after these recent incidents, which may or may not have had Russia behind them. We’ve seen massive investments, massive inve – new initiatives on a EU level, on a NATO level, and on a lot of different member states. So, you know, like, maybe in the long run, you’re taking away trump cards that maybe Russia held. You know, like, maybe in the case of an actual more serious escalation, you would have pulled the cards you would have pulled early on and you’re allowing, basically, the Alliance to prepare for that better and, kind of, incentivise NATO response.
So, these are just some of my early reflections on what’s happened.
Iona Allan
Excellent. Thank you so much, Katja, for those reflections, observations, and also, for posing a lot of questions, open-ended questions, as well, for the rest of the session. I wanted to pick up, just first of all, on the response, particularly on Operation Eastern Sentry, which I think from what you’ve said, you know, if this was a test of the Alliance’s resolve, you – it seems your view is that they’ve fared fairly reasonably. I think maybe others – you know, other commentary – other commentators would maybe disagree, but it’s, yeah, it’s good to open up that kind of conversation.
So, I’m going to take a question from the online Q&A from Adrian Blomfeld – Bloomfield rather, on this specifically, on the invocation of Article 4 and Eastern Sentry. And he’s asking, “Does this have an actual deterrent effect in Moscow? And drawing, kind of, the response specifically from the Poles, the Estonians and the Danes, how that’s likely to be part or felt in the Kremlin itself and how they’re likely to interpret that.” I also want to add onto the end of that question, something you mentioned during your opening introductory remarks, just the sense that the – okay, the sense of who’s actually missing from this response? And the, kind of, absence of American commitment, or even the comments from President Trump himself, who seemed to publicly dismiss the, kind of, the involvement of Russians and calling it a ‘potential accident’.
So, I’d wonder if you could maybe draw some of those elements together, so the deterrence of – deterrence effect of Eastern Sentry, the response in Moscow, and the lack of response from the US. Thank you.
Katja Bego
Yeah, that’s a good question. So, a couple of thoughts on that. So, first, on the effectiveness of Eastern Sentry and whether that is an actual deterrent effect, I think it’s – remains a little bit to be seen. I think it can only help. I think it’s maybe quite useful to look back at Baltic Sentry as a quite clear analogue operation that similarly happened in response, or, kind of, similarly launched in response to some, kind of, hybrid – alleged hybrid activity by Russia. Is that after that was launched, kind of, mid-January, we’ve not seen any new cable, kind of, cable incidents in the Baltic Sea or, sort of, similar things. So, that’s maybe one datapoint that we do not have in a little bit – a couple months of, kind of, no new such incidents. Whether that will be the same here, well, we will have to wait a bit.
I think it will have at least some deterrent effect in a couple of ways. This is clear, you know, it’s not a massive operation, right? Like, we’re talking, it’s – you know, it was launched quite quickly. There is increased commitment, like, a number of planes each from a couple of countries, and some other assets now deployed, in addition to what was already there along the eastern flank, which is helpful. But what I think it showed, and where that might have some utility, and it links a bit to the US discussion, as well, is that Europe is in fact able to act, and act quite quickly, without US, right?
So, it’s not that you need the US to be on board, and I agree, Iona, like, they’re – you know, they were – President Trump was very slow to respond to the Polish incident. You know, took a – kind of, the drone incident, took him quite a long time, you know, to make the phone call, and it’s maybe important to mention here, as well, is that the US is in charge when it comes to – in Poland, as a, kind of, ‘framing nation’ as they say in NATO. So, it’s not just, you know, is the largest Alliance member, in general. They’re also, actually – you know, have technically a different, sort of, defence role to play in Poland, specifically.
So, it was quite interesting since then, I think Trump has wavered on this, right? Like, first, he, kind of, called it an inc – ‘accident,’ but then he was quite forceful in response to the – yeah, well, kind of, at the UN General Assembly, kind of, these airplane incursions, kind of, calling on Europe, not the US, but on Europe, to shoot down some of these planes. I think it’s ambiguous, we don’t really know what it means. So, I think it’s probably better – I mean, assume they’re there, hope they’re there. I think it’s – you know, we’ve had some noises from others in the administration that were quite forceful. From Waltz, who was previously National Security Advisor, of the WhatsApp group fame – Signal group fame, but – and other things, now UN – US Ambassador to United Nations. And he was quite forceful saying, like, you know, that “the US is also fully committed to preventing these, sort of, incidents,” and that, you know, that “every inch of NATO should be defended.” So, they’re, kind of, still saying the usual stuff that they used to say. Whether that commitment is not ironclad or respo – translates into actual action remains to be seen.
But where I think – so to bring it back to the other point, what’s therefore, interesting and quite important is that we do see that NATO, the rest of NATO, is still quite willing to act and quite forcefully, and can do that quite convincingly, I think. You know, ‘cause there is often this idea – yeah, well, I mentioned before that, kind of, Europe would scramble, or it, kind of, would be too meek if there wasn’t that, sort of, implicit support from the US, but that’s clearly not quite the case here. So, whether it will actually deter Russia, I don’t know. I would not be surprised if we saw them upping the ante even a little bit more, you know, and we can discuss some of these – like, the actual, you know, what’s the next step in terms of escalation of what NATO has available? But in the interim, I think this was quite a forceful response and a credible thing to launch in response to a country invoking Article 4.
Iona Allan
Fantastic. Thank you, Katja, and I’m going to take a question which was submitted before the event and links a bit – it’s a slightly more, kind of, a practical question, but it, kind of, goes a little bit deeper into our understanding of what a credible NATO response would be, and how to build a strong drone wall against Russia. So, we’re talking about ‘defence’ and ‘deterrence’. You know, it’s obviously not just about drones, it’s also about anti-missile technologies, it’s about, you know, land, sea, you know, a whole spectrum of defence postures and capabilities. So, I wonder if you could, a) just ask – ha – answer – try and answer the question of how does an Alliance go about building a drone wall against Russia, and is it about drones, or is it about a bit more than drones?
Katja Bego
Yeah, I think, so, first, big picture, I’ll focus it on the drone walls. It is about something bigger, probably, than drones, well, most certainly is. And, you know, and there still remain very serious gaps in, kind of, NATO’s air defence and, kind of, stockpiles, etc., so that is the case. But when it comes specifically to, kind of, this idea or this notion of the drone wall, what needs to be in pla – puts in place most urgently, I think there’s already quite a lot that can be done there. So, I think, yeah, so we – I don’t know if you have heard of this idea, and it’s mostly come from the EU, actually to, basically, build something they call ‘a drone wall’, which is not, like, a literal, sort of, you know, curtain of drones, as some people thought.
But it’s, basically, increasing capacity all along the eastern flank, and in my view, should extend into, kind of, protection of critical infrastructure all throughout the Alliance, not just on the eastern flank. But that might be first priority that can, basically, better help prevent, and do that in a, kind of, cost-effective way, some of these incursions in the future. Which would clearly, kind of, have sort of, deterrent effect, hopefully, you know, and would be able to, you know, like, prevent – like, at least bring down more, if not all of these drones, if we see similar incidents in the future. And then, ideally, you know, like, not use multi-million dollar missiles to do so.
So, in terms – we don’t quite know yet, we see a lot of talk about this idea of a drone wall, what that would in fact, kind of, entail, or what the bits of it are. But, kind of, in my view of what you would want a drone wall or such a project to at least think about is a couple different things. So, first of all, and I think this is a very – very much already part of the planning or the idea here, is that, you know, you want to listen to Ukraine, basically. Some of the – Ukraine has the lessons. Ukraine is the one who – is the one country in the world, really, well, with Russia, that really has this much first-hand experience with counter-drone technologies, that can also help you build something that’s not just, you know, able to withstand to threats today, but also to, you know – that stays, kind of, a vague or, kind of, a flexible and dynamic in response to this really rapid innovation that we do see in the drone space.
So, some of the things you might put in place today to prevent some of these incursions or to be able to, kind of, better respond to them, might not quite look the same again in a couple of years, if you just look at the sheer pace of innovation, as we’ve seen it happen during the war in Ukraine. So, you would listen to them is my first assessment here, and particularly also when it comes to speedy deployment of some of this, or speedy development. So, Kubilius, the Commissioner, kind of, for Defence and Space is himself a Lithuanian, so he clearly has a slightly different view on some of this than maybe other countries to, at least…
Iona Allan
For the European Comm – just to confirm, Katja, for the European Commission? Kubilius.
Katja Bego
European Commissioner.
Iona Allan
Yes.
Katja Bego
Sorry, yeah, yeah, sorry, and he’s been, kind of, spearheading this, like, Commission. President Ursula von der Leyen has called for this, and he’s, kind of, taken this up to run with this. It’s being discussed earlier this week, today, as well, in Copenhagen. And the idea is that this would not, you know, follow the usual timelines of an EU thing, but, like, be deployed already within 12 months. So, you’re really clearly going to have to look at countries that have that, sort of, wartime rapid innovation, you know, processes to actually do this convincing, and well, soon.
So, I think the, kind of, ingredients on a technical level, etc., of this, kind of, thing is you really need to think here about, kind of, monitoring and detection systems. So, those look quite different for drones than they do for, kind of, traditional air defence systems. Ra – you’ll need radar, a, kind of, existing radar deployed, but not all of that particularly, with, kind of, slow, slow moving, slow drones – sorry, small drones, you know, that fly quite low. You know, they don’t tend to be picked up by traditional radar systems. So, you want something in here, we had lessons from Ukraine that combines that, different types of sensor and acoustics systems.
So, Ukraine has been able to build something quite cheap called ‘Sky Fortress’, that, basically, is quite mobile system that allows them to pick up, kind of, drone signatures in the middle of flying missiles, much better than some of these traditional systems, and those are for quite che – relatively cheap. You know, so these are things – and I know that some of the Baltic countries and others are already looking into procuring some of this, but that’s something that can be replicated. So, you want to have a combination of a bunch of different technologies that can help you detect incoming drone strikes or, kind of, drone incursions like this early.
You want to think, also, there’s also, unfortunately, not one single, kind of, counter-drone technology that’s a, sort of, panacea or silver bullet that can address all of this. So, really rapid innovation there. So, you’re, again, looking at a bunch of different technologies that can range from, like, quite literally, like, guns or, kind of, some of these quite old school, kind of, cannon systems, etc., as we’ve seen used in Ukraine to quite great effect. Just things like electronic warfare jamming systems that can, kind of like, cut signals to some of the drones, you know, stop them in situ, or, like, spoof them, you know, get – move them off track, these, sort of, things. That’s another piece here of this, kind of, layered system of combined technologies.
There’s a lot of innovation happening, for example, on the laser space and more, kind of, cutting-edge technologies that are new that you would want to probably experiment with. Ukraine has been, itself, doing a lot with, for example, interceptor drones and quite cheap drones that can take out drones in air, all of that. So, there is not one technology there, but I would think that then, you know, then at the very end of range, actually, also just more patriots and the, kind of, traditional systems, as well, and all of that, will want to work, kind of, in one combination.
And then there are some other issues here that you want to think about. So, you still really don’t have, in the way that Ukraine does, the, sort of, skilled troops or people that can actually navigate some of these, or pilot some of these systems, that are trained in counter-drone tactics. That’s basically non-existent, I would say, even also in the US Army, etc., so proper capacity and capability. So, you really need to really quickly scale that up.
So, imagine here we were looking at 19 drones into Poland. Ukraine, on the regular, looks at several hundreds of drones coming in, right? And some of these counter-drone systems, they’re not automatic, they’re not AI-steered systems. Particular people, humans usually piloting them, right? I know that’s with a lot of these systems, so you’re going to need a lot of people, think about how you want to distribute that, you know, across which key priority areas, and train them in these, sort of – kind of like, using these, sort of, systems. So, that’s something we don’t really have. Yeah…
Iona Allan
Has there been a lot of…?
Katja Bego
…and then – oh, sorry…
Iona Allan
Sorry, go ahead, Katja.
Katja Bego
Oh, no, just saying then, oh, ‘cause I’m giving a really long answer, but just basically – and then there is a lot – big – a bit uncomfortable truth is you cannot protect everything. You cannot have an actual wall that stops all of this. So, you’re going to have to prioritise and think much more about how you work with the private sector around, kind of, protic – protecting some of these critical infrastructures. Maybe not – you know, that doesn’t necessitate a, kind of, full deployment of, kind of, really anti-drone capabilities. You will want to do that for, say, airfields, military bases, ports, wherever you can.
Still, they’re finite resources, but there’s really a lot that can be done that is quite low tech, you know, and, like, kind of, rethinking some of these, kind of, basic principles around security and monitoring things. That we’ve a bit abandoned since the Cold War, I would say, and need to come back as a quite key part of this, that will require, you know, not just military intervention, but thinking about how you harden infrastructure. Maybe not put, you know, all your fighter jets on the tarmac out in the open next to each other, but distribute them better. These are, kind of, logics that we very much had during the Cold War, we’ve forgotten about, but that need to come back to really respond to quite a novel, kind of, novel new threat.
Iona Allan
Sounds like, yeah, a long way to go for NATO to build a, kind of, integrated drone defence, kind of, system, and a lot to learn from Ukraine in that respect, as well. I wonder if we could move now just to interrogate a little bit further the, kind of, motivation behind the spate of attacks from the perspective of the Kremlin. I’m going to take a question online from Mary Dejevsky, who’s saying, “There was a very big NATO sea and air exercise going on, including in the North and Baltic Sea, at the same time as various Russian probing actions. Is it not possible that Russia’s actions were actually in response to this?”
So, just, yeah, a general, kind of, question about what was the motivation? And, you know, I also would like to hear your perspective on whether, you know, Russia really can afford, or does want to probe until – you know, to probe a all-out war, extended war, in Europe, while continuing to fight in Ukraine. So, I wonder if you could speak a little bit about the, kind of, motivation and Russian response in this respect.
Katja Bego
Yeah, absolutely. So, I should say, so I have my theories about this, but I’m not like a, sort of, Kremlinologist. I know we have some colleagues, actually, on the call from Chatham House who are actually in our, kind of, in our Russia Programme, who would have. But, kind of, my read of the situation of what is happening here is that there is, kind of, the usual Russian playbook behind a lot of this imposing costs on Alliance, trying to, kind of, you know, sow divisions and get – you know, try to bring cleavages, basically, in the Alliance, etc. So, there is the usual, kind of, hybrid playbook. I think there also is a tendency that Russia has to, kind of, make its displeasure about certain things known through these, sort of, actions. You know, saying, like, this is not just something they’ll say something angry about, but they’ll follow it up with action like this.
I think a question probably referred to, sort of, this Neptune Strike operation. So, it’s, kind of – someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I think started after some of these earlier incidents, anyway. So, I think, you know, it’s maybe partial, a little bit, also the other way around, that some of the more forceful thing that were done as part of Neptune Strike are probably also, in part, in response to some of these Ne – Russian incursions. But there definitely is something here that Russia is trying to signal in terms of, you know, it’s probably no surprise that this is now happening in Copenhagen. And Denmark specifically singled out as one of the non-direct frontline states, in terms as being one of the countries, of course, been a big ardent supporter of Ukraine throughout the war. A bit of a front runner when it comes to the, kind of, countries that are not directly on the frontlines, that there’s now quite key meetings happening in Denmark, in the EU context, in the European political community, right? So, that is no coincidence.
In terms of what Russia is trying to achieve with this, is – maybe have one contrarian view and one can be more mainstream. I think a lot of people have interpreted this as a, sort of, show on force – a show of force on Russia’s part. I think you can perhaps also consider this a bit of a show of weakness, if you will. You know, that is –I wouldn’t want to, say, speculate on that too much, but, like, we’ve just had – you know, like, they’re – it’s not going as well on the battlefield in Ukraine as it was previously, internal issues becoming starker.
I’m not expecting a day [inaudible – 33:43], you know, the Russian Army suddenly, kind of, collapsing or anything. But things are not going particularly well, and we’ve just recently had the Zapad 2025 military exercises, that Russia runs together with Belarus, which were not bad, but they’re maybe not as impressive as they were in the past, or, kind of, as forceful. Where it’s becoming a little bit clearer now, you know, some of the erosion in Russia’s military capability in – you know, as a result of min…
Iona Allan
And is that – I mean, is it a weaker exercise because of – because they’re fighting – I mean, it was – the last – I think the last Zapad was pre-Ukraine invasion, so maybe you could – you talk a little bit more about the context there and how…?
Katja Bego
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so, basically, that – yeah, so last time it’s – you know, like, before it started, a lot of people were really worried, you know, Russia’s maybe going to use this as an excuse, you know, like, to launch invasions and things. But it was quite clear it was still – they do this, basically, every so many years as a bit of a show of force, right? To show off what they’re capable of as a military and to – in the past, as well, to, kind of, show – very different world now, but, kind of, its, yeah, modernisation of its army, etc.
Now it’s become quite clear this time around that some of those, kind of, shows of force that they were able to showcase in the past, you know, that they’re – just don’t really have the ability to quite do that in the same way, just because of, you know, like, resource constraints, etc. You know, like, they’ve been, - or it’s not, despite everything, of course, not being – going particularly well for Russia, so that this is maybe also a way of, kind of, disguising that, or, you know, to instil a little bit of fear. As that has all just happened as maybe some of the other ingredient, or, kind of, visual aspects of Russia’s, kind of, power projection maybe don’t look quite as impressive as they did before.
I think of an actual strategic calculus behind this, is, I would think – and maybe you can get a bit into this idea of them trying to, kind of, poke the Alliance to see if someone will maybe, you know, shoot down one of these planes or something at some point…
Iona Allan
Hmmm hmm.
Katja Bego
…is really perhaps this ambition to, kind of, drive a wedge, ideally, then, in the Alliance. You know, have one country maybe take quite a forceful step like that. Maybe the Poles shoot down next time a Russian plane enters their airspace a bit further than in the past, and see maybe, you know, how will the US respond to such a thing? You know, will they – what will Trump do when someone takes that kind of decision? I mean, it’s very much a question mark how Trump would respond to that and how the rest of the Alliance would respond to that, I don’t know, but that is what I would think has to be some of the strategic calculus here. I don’t think these are, kind of, activities that are prepping, or like, trying to gear up for an actual serious conventional escalation…
Iona Allan
Right.
Katja Bego
…with NATO, is my sense of this.
Iona Allan
Excellent, and this brings me to a question submitted by Alex Barker online, specifically about – who mentions, you know, the “signals sent by the Zapad exercises,” and is asking, “What counter posture options are realistic on NATO’s part that wouldn’t trigger escalation?” So, I think it’s a good question, and an interesting one, about this whole – the calculation of deterrence versus escalation. And I know that, you know, you mentioned the drone attacks in Denmark and, you know, Denmark, one of – part of the response, at least from the Danish Prime Minister, was saying that they’re now considering acquiring, you know, ‘long-range weapons’, weapons which the Kremlin clearly doesn’t want them to acquire. So…
Katja Bego
Exactly.
Iona Allan
…is, you know, this whole, kind of, calculation of deterrence escalation – yeah, I would love if you could go a little bit into that.
Katja Bego
Yes, ‘cause – in terms of option – I – you see, this is maybe – I would personally not, per se, be too worried about gen – kind of, causing an actual serious escalation with whatever NATO chooses to do next. I think the bigger risk is in not acting at all, to be honest, because that will see the envelope pushed further and further. So, for example, can zoom in just on that big question that I think everyone’s been discussing, is the next step? Next time we see an incursion like this, should NATO really set out this mas – like, hard red line, next time you do this, we shoot them down? Some have suggested this, right? Like, Sikorski, you know, Foreign Minister of Poland, for example, or, you know, not quite as explicit as a red line, but we’ve had multiple leaders now suggest that that’s, kind of, the next rung, or at least a possibility.
There is stuff – there are things you can do before that, I think, or there are other options available, as well. We don’t need to necessarily always think of this as a, kind of, like-for-like escalation, but I mean, well, ultimately, you know, I’m not the biggest fan of this as, kind of, next step escalations, but there is more that you can do, of course, on the sanctions front. There is more that you can do in terms of every time Russia does a thing like this, give them more weapons, give them the ability to, indeed, do long strike – long-range strikes. That, sort of, thing that, you know, that will not be received well, but you can make it quite clear that there are escalatory steps you can take.
This will probably not fly in the Alliance and is quite escalatory, but I think is quite interesting, is this idea, do you say that you’re going to extend, sort of, NATO, like, a, sort of, air no-fly zone into Western Ukraine, for example? Saying like, “Look, we’re going to” – or if not a no-fly zone, at least say that you’re going to shoot down drones already in Ukrainian airspor – space or other, kind of, Russian assets or things over Ukrainian airspace, in response, you know, to prevent further incursions like this in the future. I think there is that, sort of, palette of options.
I think in terms of the actual shooting down the plane, it wouldn’t surprise me if someone’s going to do this at some stage, and I think maybe we shouldn’t be too afraid of this. So, actually – ‘cause a lot of – there is this assumption it is very escalatory. I think quite a lot of people have compared it to the situation with Turkey shooting down Russian…
Iona Allan
Yeah.
Katja Bego
…planes back in 2015. I don’t think that’s the best comparison, actually, but what I think is an interesting comparison, and Sergey Radchenko wrote a good piece around this that I recommend to people, is that we should actually be looking at the Cold War. You know, there is quite a lot of precedent of the Soviet Union, and to a lesser extent, NATO, shooting down planes in actually far hotter situations that we are in now. So, even during the Cuban missile crisis, right? Like – and that didn’t lead to a, sort of, massive escalation. I think what the power of that is is that if we start to see, you know – you can’t verbally set a red line, but the only way to actually establish a red line is by action, I would say. And if maybe not next time a pla – any, kind of, plane enters, you know, even, you know, 20 seconds into NATO airspace, maybe not.
But if you se – look at something, you know, an airplane – a jet that is not responding to communications, is really going quite deep into NATO, probably a response should perhaps be to bring it down. I think that’s – and then you – that is perhaps the way to establish a red line. I’m not certain, but this is, of course, around – is something that we can debate, but I’m not saying that this is the best option, but it is probably a way to really show to Russia to here and no further, then you’ve established the red line quite clearly. And I would dispute that that is necessarily escalatory, because actually, it might, in some ways, you know, actually be de-escalatory as well, right? ‘Cause it, sort of, sets, like, “Okay, to here and no further,” and we’ve all understood that now. Of course, it’s…
Iona Allan
Drastic, yeah.
Katja Bego
…cruel on the Kremlin’s part if they’re willing for this to, kind of, sacrifice a Pilot, etc., for that cost…
Iona Allan
Yeah.
Katja Bego
…but that’s another discussion.
Iona Allan
Thank you, Katja. I’m going to take one final question online, and then we’re going to move to a very quick poll, before we wrap up. So, this question comes from Trisha de Borchgrav – Borchgrave, and she’s asking, “How dangerous is” – so if we can just – a very quick response to this, please, Katja, and then we’ll…
Katja Bego
Yeah, of course.
Iona Allan
…move on. So, “How dangerous is spoofing/jamming lasers and drones themselves for commercial airline traffic when this is happening across the Baltics, Middle East and Asia, as well?”
Katja Bego
That’s a good question and that is part, of course, of the trickiness that’s proven, kind of, in responding to some of this. And for example, the Danes chose not to, you know, bring them down, so, for quite busy, you know, civilian areas, like, that is part of the tricky things here. Like, if you – you know, electronic warfare will also harm, you know, like, normal civilian airliners if you start to use that, or shooting down things over a large city, you know, like, it will land somewhere. So, yeah, that is part of the complication, and why you would want to look at a multitude of technologies and solutions.
Iona Allan
And part of the aim, I suppose, on the part of Kremlin or other…
Katja Bego
Hmmm.
Iona Allan
…hostile actors is to sow as much chaos and instability as possible. Thank you so much for answering those questions. I’m sorry we didn’t get through as many…
Katja Bego
Hmmm hmm.
Iona Allan
…like, all the questions, we got some great ones online, and before the event, as well. So, we’re now going to conduct a short poll. You should be getting a question popping up on your Zoom screens. So, the question is, “Are we already at war with Russia?” You have three choices, which is, “Yes, no,” or “undecided.” So, please vote on the poll now and then we’ll discuss the results in a couple of seconds. I’m going to – so before we get the results, Katya, I wonder if you – what your response to that would be.
Katja Bego
Oh, God, I hoped you wouldn’t ask me that, but we’re not not at war with Russia, but I would call it…
Iona Allan
To reassure us, as well, slightly.
Katja Bego
Yeah, no, maybe – I mean, okay, so, if I would say, so, like, I don’t anticipate this to go hot anytime soon, but I think we’re clearly not in, kind of, normal peacetime situation anymore, and that is not because of us, right? Like, it’s being – the realms of acceptability are being pushed further. So, we’re at something, yeah, a subthreshold war, if you will, not – yeah. Whether that will lead to further escalation, I hope not. I don’t think that it will anytime soon.
Iona Allan
Okay, so we don’t have a completely resounding clear frontrunner in response. We have 43% say, “Yes, we are at war already with Russia.” 35% say, “No,” and we have 22% say that they are “undecided.” So, I think maybe what is clear is that we’re – you know, what you’ve made clear from this discussion and through answering these various questions is that Russian aggression is clearly escalating, and the nature of that threat is also changing quite rapidly. And yes, that reacting to that will require a great more deal of cohesion and agility on the part of NATO and its 32 member states. So, any final thoughts to wrap up, Katya, before I thank you and say goodbye to the audience?
Katja Bego
Well, I think it was a interesting – sorry that we didn’t get to quite so many of the questions, as I know there were a bunch more, but it’s, yeah, it’s an evolving situation. I think we’re going to have to do a lot of strategic thinking quickly. It was interesting to see the poll, and indeed, to see people so divided, and I guess that’s, indeed, sort of, the root of the issue that we’re in, right? Like, how to navigate this increasingly, kind of, complex, not quite war, kind of, yes, situation with Russia, and what are the right responses? So, thank you.
Iona Allan
Yeah, and there’s a lot of [inaudible – 44:53] kind of, a valid question in itself. So, thank you very much for joining us, Katja, that was fantastic, and thanks for answering as many questions as possible. Thank you for everyone who joined online and for who – those who submitted questions. There was some really fantastic, yeah, fantastic discussion there. Please join us for the next Member Question Time event next week, which I believe will be focusing on French internal political turmoil. And in the meantime, like I say, please grab your copies of The World Today magazine, and also, read that online, as well. So, thanks very much, and have a great afternoon.
