The chief of Germany’s foreign intelligence service warned that his agency has “concrete” evidence that Russia is planning an attack on Nato territory.
Bruno Kahl, the outgoing head of Germany’s federal intelligence service (BND), said in a rare interview that Russian leadership no longer believes Nato’s article 5 guarantee of mutual assistance will be honoured — and may seek to test it.
“We are very sure, and we have intelligence evidence to back this up, that [Russia’s full-scale invasion of] Ukraine is only one step on Russia’s path towards the west,” he told a podcast of German outlet Table Briefings.
Kahl qualified that “this doesn’t mean that we expect large tank battalions to roll from the east to the west.”
Kahl said: “We see that Nato is supposed to be tested in its mutual assistance promise. There are people in Moscow who don’t believe that Nato’s article 5 still works.”
[…]
While the war is still confined to Ukrainian territory, the German internal secret service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), has warned that Moscow is increasingly extending the conflict to western countries through cyberwarfare and espionage.
Russia has in particular taken to deploying so-called low-level agents to commit acts of sabotage, according to the BfV annual report, which was presented in Berlin on Wednesday. They are believed to have been deployed to plant incendiary devices in parcels, which caused a series of fires in European logistics hubs last year.
“We have noticed that Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has led to our cyber and espionage defences being increasingly tested,” Sinan Selim, vice-president of the BfV, said.
Didn’t we laugh at how bad the Russian army is for years? Now they want to attack Germany?! Schroedingers Russia is always on the brink of collaps and invading Europe. At least one of these takes must be … propaganda?
Too weak to win the war, too strong and will invade Germany.
Where have I heard that before…
They were really bad three years ago, but if I’m not mistaken they’ve gotten themselves in shape while the West was busy pretending deescalation was ever an option.
Do you have anything supporting that? There is a ocean of evidence showing otherwise.
They have nothing but they have drones. That is like europe still doing cavalry charges and russia fielding the machine gun.
They also back all the right wing parties, they are currently backing terrorist cells and militias in european countries, they backed the NRA, their fucking asset is running the biggest nato country into the ground and civil war.
Their army, air force, navy may be a joke but nkvd or whatever they call themselves this week is scary.
The drone warfare revolution. They have levelled up technologically and we haven’t. A whole lot of assumptions are out the window. For example, the NATO doctrine has always been that Baltics are “speedbumps”, they slow down the invasion until the cavalry comes and blows the invaders out of the water. But drone warfare has shown wars are no longer manoeuvre wars and it’s much easier to defend territory once captured. Which means that the speedbump doctrine doesn’t work.
Other example: Russia has had to learn to fight with meat wave attacks and masses of cheap drones at scale. We rely on a few highly trained and highly equipped professionals that rely on expensive and complicated supply chains. Our system is technologically superior but much more brittle.
In both those cases, the sheer scale of the US Armed forces can potentially deal with both problems. But without them, these are much less tractable.
Could be just me but my impression is that Ukraine is facing stiffer resistance now than in 2022-2023 when they were retaking one territory after another. At the very least they have their logistics in order now… is what I wanted to say, but I can’t find a source corroborating that. Ignore what I said I guess.
I’m no war expert here, I’m not going to pretend I know anything more than a handful of videos and articles. So I wasn’t trying to come at you hard or anything.
Ah, I do get what you’re saying there. I’ve wondered the same. We do hear about the Russians even gaining ground.
But the losses in manpower and equipment Russia is incurring isn’t sustainable, and with the level of sanctions against them, they can’t replace their best equipment. Or so I’ve read. What do I know, I’m always open to more information.
We also shouldn’t forget Russian command will be willing to do things Nato won’t, like bombing civilians or forcing people to join the army. They might for example threaten to execute a pow or retaliate by using chemical weapons. If two parties are not fighting by the same rules, it won’t be all about who has the biggest military power. I think you’re right on their losses not being sustainable, although I think they’ll be more likely to choose more desperate measures than they’d consider retreating.
Indeed. Long term unsustainable losses don’t matter that much to a homicidal dictator who gives exactly zero shits about the lives of his subjects.
As long as Putin thinks he can reach his goals before Russia runs out of population, he will keep going. He can still play the long game of a war of attrition, especially given how successful his psy-ops in western countries are. His divide and conquer approach is working. He always has at least one sycophant government in an EU country, blocking important decisions through abuse of the principle of unanimity. He did bolster the Brexit campaign all the way to success, he managed to install his deranged sock puppet in the White House for a second time (and potentially for good), and is successfully sowing dissent in the western alliances by bolstering far right ultranationalists in all sorts of countries. In most western countries, there is no organised counter to this, rather the established political caste is idiotically copying the rhetoric of the divisive far right populists (consisting of mostly lies) in order to (unsuccessfully) win back voters.
Putin only needs to make his war expensive enough for an increasingly divided West to lose interest. If he is allowed to conquer Ukraine, he will want to continue.
In what fucking universe is NATO even remotely averse to bombing civilians?
Well nato soldiers do a lot of shit, sometimes with permission of or even ordered by their superiors, there are numerous war crimes that have not been put to justice. But that doesn’t mean that it would be willing to bomb civilians as a means when it comes to a war against russia. Nato and putin adhere to very different principles, not just moral ones.
Delusional
They literally had a bunch of their bomber fleet destroyed by drones from Ukraine.
Their fleets would instantly be targeted by standard missiles from all the other countries if they attacked.
But guess you can never underestimate stupid. Maybe they’re feeling cocky because of the Polish elections
Their military is in shambles. Satellite photos show their armored vehicle stockpiles are virtually empty, to the point where they’re sending some troops on suicide runs using ATV’s, golf carts, and motorcycles because they don’t have enough APC’s to spare.
They are in no shape to invade anyone besides ukraine.
But Vance said…
Well, russia started BAD into the conflict, but they in fact did learn and innovate… and the influx of north korean soldiers surely do help them.