Germany is readying itself for a potential attack on NATO by Russian forces in 2025, according to leaked plans published by German newspaper Bild.
The secret documents from the German Ministry of Defense detail a step-by-step projection that sees Russia escalating the Ukraine conflict into an all-out European war over the next year and a half. The documents predict that Russia will take Ukraine and then launch cyber attacks and foment violence in Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
This violence, the documents claim, would then be used by Putin as a pretense to amass troops in Belarus and Western Russia, before moving more troops and missiles to Kaliningrad, a Russian enclave that lies between Poland and Lithuania. Russian military buildup in the region would then force NATO to engage in a similar troop buildup, which would be portrayed in Russia as proof of an impending attack and used by Putin as casus belli.
“[C]onsidering different scenarios, even if they are extremely unlikely, is part of everyday military business, especially in training,” a German defense official, who refused to comment on the specific doomsday scenario, told Bild.
The secret plans were leaked just days after British PM Rishi Sunak announced a new security agreement with Ukraine and pledged more than $3 billion in additional aid to the country, and also follow a warning by the Swedish civil defense minister that his country could soon find itself in a war.
