Chief of Germany’s foreign intelligence service fears Moscow wants to push the West’s alliance back to its 1990s boundaries and ‘kick out’ the US from Europe

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.sdf.org/post/36511553

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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.

  • hauiA
    23·
    2 days ago

    Crosscomment:

    It really makes zero sense.

    First of all, there is a war going on for years, fought on the internet, by hackers of all countries, trying to destabilize others.

    Russia allegedly did send bombs in packages through europe.

    All developed countries in the world (except china) are seeing a massive fascist push and a push towards war.

    This is exactly what happened before the last two world wars. It doesnt fit the “russia bad” narrative at all. It fits the “capitalism bad” much better.

    We have a fully unleashed capitalist hellscape where infinite and uncontrolled wealth increase has become the norm for a select few while the rest struggles in full time jobs, sometimes multiple, although we could feed everyone on the planet with single digit work hours per week.

    We are seeing capitalism pulling out all the stops to keep the rich in power. That is what is happening. Nothing else.

    • tfm@europe.pubOPM
      2·
      2 days ago

      It doesnt fit the “russia bad” narrative at all. It fits the “capitalism bad” much better.

      Why can’t it be both? Capitalists take money from Russia and they interfere and meddle in western elections to destabilize to western world even further.

      Russia wins if the west loses and capitalists only care about short term profit.

      • hauiA
        13·
        2 days ago

        I’m not saying it cant be both. I’m saying “it being russia” fits capitalists the best and you can see remnants of this in all history books.

        Of course russia could be planning sonething like this, it is just highly unlikely. Putin would be bringing doom on himself and his country. Its a much worse gamble than ukraine who supposedly easily fights him off. In no sane mind this country would be able to invade nato states and get of scot free.

        If you switch to “nato is infamous for illegally invading other countries and is preparing a narrative for invading russia” it fits the bill perfectly. Has been done in lybia, irak, afghanistan, Yugoslavia, etc