Bruno Kahl, head of Germany’s Federal Intelligence Service (BND), has stated that the Russian Federation intends to test the effectiveness of Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty. He emphasized that German intelligence possesses concrete evidence of the Kremlin’s preparations for potential aggression against the Alliance, reports Baltimore Chronicle with reference to The Times.
According to Kahl, Moscow no longer believes in the reliability of NATO’s collective defense mechanism. The Kremlin may attempt to put to the test the guarantees enshrined in Article 5, which commits member states of the Alliance to mutual defense in the event of an attack.
“We are absolutely convinced and have intelligence evidence confirming that the full-scale invasion of Ukraine is only one phase of Russia’s broader campaign toward the West,” Kahl said. He clarified that this does not imply an imminent invasion by large tank battalions moving from East to West.
Similar concerns have previously been voiced by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius. In an interview with Tagesspiegel last year, he stated that Germany must be “ready for war” by the end of this decade. According to Pistorius, experts estimate that a threat from Russia could materialize within five to eight years.
In its February report, Danish military intelligence concluded that once the war in Ukraine ends, Russia could redeploy substantial forces to the borders of other European countries within six months.
Kahl warned that Russia seeks to “push NATO back to its 1990s borders,” “expel the United States from Europe,” and “expand its influence at any cost.” “We must suppress this at the very beginning,” the BND chief stressed.
Despite rising tensions, he noted that cooperation with the United States remains strong. “The Americans take Article 5 very seriously, but at the same time rightly insist that Europe must contribute its share,” he added.
Sinan Selim, Deputy Head of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), reported that Russia is increasingly using cyberattacks and sabotage against Western countries. According to him, Russia’s aggression against Ukraine has led to German cyber defense and counterintelligence capabilities being repeatedly tested under serious pressure.
The BfV’s annual report states that Russia has begun actively deploying so-called “low-level agents” to carry out acts of sabotage, including placing incendiary devices in packages, which have caused a series of fires in logistics centers across Europe.
Earlier we wrote that Rutte spoke about NATO’s role in negotiations to end the war in Ukraine.