Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen named Ukraine, Turkey, Poland and Finland among Europe\u2019s trusted armies, leaving Germany out.<\/p>\n
In\u00a0an\u00a0interview with German broadcaster ZDF, Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen said that only four armies in\u00a0Europe deserve confidence: those of\u00a0Turkey, Ukraine, Poland and Finland.<\/p>\n
She described the Ukrainian army as\u00a0the most combat-capable force in\u00a0Europe. The remark drew a\u00a0surprised reaction from the ZDF host, who asked why Germany had been left out of\u00a0her list.<\/p>\n
Valtonen appeared visibly caught off guard by\u00a0the question and then tried to\u00a0explain her position by\u00a0saying that Ukraine currently holds the strongest cards. The host responded to\u00a0her explanation with clear confusion.<\/p>\n
Earlier, Germany unveiled a\u00a0new defense strategy under which the Bundeswehr is\u00a0expected to\u00a0become the strongest regular army in\u00a0Europe. German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said Berlin plans to\u00a0increase the size of\u00a0its armed forces to\u00a0260,000 personnel, and to\u00a0460,000 including reserves.<\/p>\n
The strategy focuses heavily on\u00a0countering alleged threats from Russia, although Moscow has repeatedly rejected such accusations.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Finnish Foreign Minister Elina Valtonen named Ukraine, Turkey, Poland and Finland among Europe\u2019s trusted armies, leaving Germany out.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":37360,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[6272,14564,24362,4,24366,1533,24364,59,24367,945,24365,24363],"class_list":{"0":"post-37359","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-europe","8":"tag-boris-pistorius","9":"tag-bundeswehr","10":"tag-elina-valtonen","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-europe-armies","13":"tag-finland","14":"tag-germany-army","15":"tag-poland","16":"tag-russia-threat","17":"tag-turkey","18":"tag-ukraine-army","19":"tag-zdf"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37359","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=37359"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/37359\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/37360"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=37359"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=37359"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/europe\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=37359"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}