Germany’s chief of defence Carsten Breuer has said he sees a growing danger in Russia’s military build-up.
“We are observing that the Russian army is being directed towards the West,” Breuer, officially the inspector general of the Bundeswehr, told the local newspaper Sächsische Zeitung.
He said that in five to eight years, Moscow’s forces would be equipped with enough materiel and personnel so that an attack on NATO territory would be possible.
He cited his own analyses, intelligence reports and statements from allied forces, as well as remarks by Russian President Vladimir Putin, as the basis for these assessments.
“The Russian army increases its number of tanks by 1,000 to 1,500 additional units every year. The five largest European NATO member states together have just half of that in their inventory,” Breuer said.
The Bundeswehr, as Germany’s armed forces are known, has around 300 battle tanks. “If this capability is combined with the intention, which can certainly be inferred from Putin’s speeches, it should alarm us. My job is to consider such a worst-case scenario. For the Bundeswehr, that means: We must be prepared for this possibility within five years. Only in this way can we deter,” Breuer added.
However, he said that the new threat situation has not yet been fully recognized everywhere.
