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.”
Boris Pistorius, the German defence minister, has previously issued similar warnings. He has said repeatedly that Germany should be “ready for war” by the end of the decade.
• The peace dividend is dead: we must embrace defence
“At the moment, I don’t think a Russian attack is likely,” Pistorius told Tagesspiegel in an interview last year. “Our experts estimate that it could be possible within a period of five to eight years.”
The estimate aligns with a threat assessment published in February by the Danish Defence Intelligence Service. Once the war in Ukraine ends, the Kremlin will be able to free up significant military resources to fight a war in a country bordering Russia within six months, according to the report.
Bruno Kahl, the head of Germany’s federal intelligence service
ALAMY
Kahl, who is set to become the German ambassador to the Vatican, warned that Moscow aims to push Nato back to its 1990s boundaries, “kick out” the US from Europe, and expand its influence by any means necessary. “We need to nip this in the bud,” he said.
He noted, however, that co-operation with the United States had remained stable, despite occasional strains. “The Americans take Article 5 very seriously,” he said, “but they rightly insist Europe must do its part.”
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.
• British fighter jets to carry nuclear bombs
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.