Anders Puck Nielsen, military analyst with the Royal Danish Defence College, told Newsmax on Friday that Russia is intensifying what he calls the “hybrid war” against Western Europe, escalating pressure with drone incursions aimed at eroding European support for Ukraine.
“We are in a phase of escalation where Russia will keep on ramping up the pressure on Western Europe,” Nielsen said on “Newsline.” “They want Europe to stop supporting Ukraine … as long as the war in Ukraine continues, Russia is going to increase the pressure because they’re not just going to sit there and watch while Europe helps Ukraine until Russia loses.”
Nielsen was asked about President Donald Trump’s guidance to shoot down drones when they enter European airspace. But Nielsen explained that the drones now disrupting airports across Europe are small and often launched domestically, making them hard to detect and defend against.
“We just can’t use the very expensive air defense systems against these cheap drones … we will run out of air defense real soon,” he cautioned.
But he warned the larger threat comes from the Iranian-made Shahed drones deployed by Moscow, which are the size of aircraft and capable of striking critical infrastructure.
European leaders have moved to strengthen their defenses. Earlier this year, nine nations, stretching from Norway through Finland and down to Poland, announced plans to construct what has been dubbed a “drone wall“ along Europe’s eastern flank.
The project would combine surveillance radars, electronic jamming, and low-cost interceptors to counter Russia’s growing fleet of unmanned systems. The goal is to create layered defenses that can stop both large Shahed drones and the smaller quadcopters that have been used to harass civilian targets.
“The drone wall would be against the bigger ones,” Nielsen said, adding that NATO has been slow to adapt to the low-cost, high-volume drone threat.
Nielsen emphasized that Western Europe must urgently learn from Ukraine’s battlefield experience.
“Ukraine is ahead on this issue,” he said. “They have 3 1/2 years of experience in dealing with these drones. We need to learn to do that as quickly as possible, because we are behind.”
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