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.”
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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.
I mean, a lot of that was bombed away, and then there was a metal shortage. They didn’t have much choice.
And they do still have some. Germany and Austria both produce weapons. The Abrahms main gun is a German design. France makes a lot and sells it to whomever, too. The Exocet is an anti-ship missile of theirs, and they haven’t always been discriminating in who they sell it to. The times they’ve been fired in anger has been mostly at the ships of other NATO members.
Isn’t it normal for countries to produce some of their military gear though? Surely you don’t think they should have bought everything from the US
As I said, I have no idea where to go with this. Every option goes down an unacceptable path.