This Is the 'New Normal' For Geopolitics: Tina Fordham

Tina Fordham, founder at Fordham Global Foresight, discusses the growth of geopolitical risk events in recent years and how economic warfare and cyberattacks are charting a 'new normal' for geopolitics. She speaks with Bloomberg's Tom Keene and David Gura.

Ukraine’s drone strike deep inside Russian territory left Kremlin officials angry and alarmed over the sudden vulnerability of a nuclear-capable air fleet far from the battlefield, according to people close to senior officials in Moscow.

Sunday’s dramatic attack on Russian long-range bombers in air fields in Siberia helped to disrupt an arsenal that Moscow deploys to hit Ukraine with some of its most powerful missiles. It also demonstrated Ukraine’s ability to hit key assets thousands of miles from the front lines, which the Russian military had thought were safe.

While nobody is predicting that Sunday’s dramatic attack will change the course of Vladimir Putin’s war, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy celebrated the “brilliant” covert operation.

Planned over a year and a half and involving unmanned aerial vehicles popping out of trucks that had been driven across Russia’s vast expanse, it was the longest-range mission undertaken in the three-year war, he said.

The damage inflicted on the warplanes is likely to rattle decision makers around Putin rather than shake up Moscow’s military aims. Only a few such bombers are needed for attacks on Ukraine, meaning that the pace of missile and bombing strikes won’t slow, according to people close to the Kremlin who spoke on condition of anonymity.

But the deep-penetration raid was a direct hit on air assets, including targets on Tu-160, Tu-95 and Tu-22 M3 bombers that have long been considered less vulnerable to attack than land and naval forces, which have suffered bigger losses. Russia’s Defense Ministry confirmed attacks at five military airbases across the country on Sunday.

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