{"id":138402,"date":"2025-05-28T10:36:08","date_gmt":"2025-05-28T10:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/138402\/"},"modified":"2025-05-28T10:36:08","modified_gmt":"2025-05-28T10:36:08","slug":"lavrov-calls-german-army-plans-very-worrying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/138402\/","title":{"rendered":"Lavrov Calls German Army Plans \u2018Very Worrying\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"<p data-start=\"255\" data-end=\"463\">Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday called Germany\u2019s plans to build the \u201cstrongest\u201d army in Europe a \u201cvery worrying\u201d development.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"465\" data-end=\"797\">\u201cMany were immediately reminded of the last century, when Germany twice became the leading military power, and how much trouble that caused,\u201d Lavrov said at a security conference in Moscow.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"799\" data-end=\"1095\">Germany, long reluctant to ramp up military spending since World War II, has shifted course in recent years, emerging as one of Ukraine\u2019s most steadfast backers.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"799\" data-end=\"1095\">German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has also pledged to provide \u201call financial means necessary\u201d to modernize Germany\u2019s long-underfunded armed forces.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1097\" data-end=\"1286\">Berlin recently stationed a 5,000-strong armored brigade in Lithuania, making it\u00a0the country\u2019s first permanent foreign troop deployment since the end of WWII.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1288\" data-end=\"1604\">The Kremlin has frequently invoked the Soviet Union\u2019s fight against Nazi Germany to rally domestic support for its invasion of Ukraine, portraying the conflict as a continuation of that historical struggle.<\/p>\n<p data-start=\"1606\" data-end=\"1808\">Russia and Germany had maintained relatively stable ties before the 2022 invasion, but Berlin has since become one of Kyiv\u2019s main military and political supporters, a position Merz has vowed to uphold.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Wednesday called Germany\u2019s plans to build the \u201cstrongest\u201d army in Europe a&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138403,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5310],"tags":[2000,299,1824,29410],"class_list":{"0":"post-138402","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-germany","8":"tag-eu","9":"tag-europe","10":"tag-germany","11":"tag-lavrov"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114585022093249055","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138402","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138402"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138402\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138403"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138402"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138402"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138402"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}