Financial Times<\/a>.<\/p>\nAccording to\u00a0Pudans, the fighting in\u00a0Ukraine has given the Russian military a\u00a0constant testing ground where new solutions can be\u00a0tried, adjusted and improved directly under front-line conditions. He\u00a0said this has strengthened Russia\u2019s\u00a0capabilities in\u00a0unmanned systems.<\/p>\n
The general argued that Russia\u2019s\u00a0advantage lies in\u00a0the scalability of\u00a0its drone production: it\u00a0can rapidly replenish stocks and maintain large volumes on\u00a0a\u00a0broad scale.<\/p>\n
At the same time, Pudans said NATO\u00a0remains stronger than Russia in\u00a0several traditional military areas, including aviation. But the alliance, he\u00a0added, still faces difficulties in\u00a0increasing defense spending, expanding its industrial base and deploying additional forces along its eastern flank.<\/p>\n
Pudans also said Russia could try to attack NATO\u00a0countries before Europe completes its rearmament. He\u00a0suggested that this risk could remain until the end of\u00a02028, calling the Baltic states the most vulnerable section of\u00a0the alliance\u2019s\u00a0eastern flank.<\/p>\n
Earlier, the Independent reported that NATO\u00a0had held exercises in\u00a0the London Underground, rehearsing a\u00a0\u00abdeep strike\u00bb scenario against Russia. According to\u00a0the newspaper, military personnel used one of\u00a0the subway stations as\u00a0an\u00a0underground headquarters and modeled actions in\u00a0the event of\u00a0an\u00a0attack on\u00a0allied forces.<\/p>\n
Moscow has repeatedly said that Russia has no intention of attacking NATO\u00a0countries. Russian President Vladimir Putin has argued that Western politicians use the idea of\u00a0a\u00a0\u00abRussian threat\u00bb to\u00a0frighten the public and divert attention from domestic problems. In\u00a0his view, such claims have no\u00a0real basis and mainly serve to\u00a0intensify anti-Russian rhetoric.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Latvian commander Kaspars Pudans says Russia\u2019s drone production scale gives it an edge over NATO as Europe races…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":726,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[232,548,550,547,69,7,549,546,453],"class_list":["post-725","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-baltic-states","tag-drone-production","tag-european-rearmament","tag-kaspars-pudans","tag-latvia","tag-nato","tag-nato-eastern-flank","tag-russia-drones","tag-ukraine-conflict"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=725"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/725\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/726"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=725"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=725"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=725"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}