German defence chief warns of Russian military build-up

Carsten Breuer, Inspector General of the Bundeswehr, speaks at the opening of the Bundeswehr Day at the Holzdorf site at Saxony-Anhalt, Holzdorf-Schoenewalde on June 08, 2024. Breuer has said he sees a growing danger in Russia’s military build-up | Photo: Frank Hammerschmidt/dpa

By Carsten Hoffmann, dpa

Berlin (dpa) – 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.

In five to eight years, he said that 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.

Germany’s highest-ranking soldier made it clear during the conversation that he sees no signs of a military disengagement of the U.S. from Europe and expects that Donald Trump, if re-elected as U.S. president, would recognize the value of NATO.

“Trump brutally held a mirror up to us Europeans and made it clear that we need to strengthen the European pillar of the alliance and assume a more independent role from the U.S. Everyone understood this with Russia’s war of aggression by the latest,” Breuer said.

Compared to 2020, it is now apparent that not just two or three NATO states are meeting the agreed spending target of 2 percent of national gross domestic product on defence, but over 20 states are, he added.

“That should also be a good ‘deal’ for Trump. I am more optimistic than others that, with some distance from the election campaign, the great added value of the alliance will also become clearer to him,” he added.

In Ukraine, the Bundeswehr inspector general expects no significant changes to the front lines in the near future, but the country will remain dependent on support. “We will not see any large-scale movements on the Ukrainian battlefield in the foreseeable future. The course and fortification of the front make this largely impossible,” Breuer said.

“Small, slow operations are conceivable; large-scale offensives are very difficult. A concentration of troops would be immediately detected and lead to countermeasures,” he added.