BERLIN: Russia is determined to test the resolve of the NATO alliance, including by extending its confrontation with the West beyond the borders of Ukraine, the Germany\u2019s foreign intelligence chief told the Table Media news organization.
\nBruno Kahl, head of the Federal Intelligence Service, said his agency had clear intelligence indications that Russian officials believed the collective defense obligations enshrined in the NATO treaty no longer had practical force.
\n\u201cWe are quite certain, and we have intelligence showing it, that Ukraine is only a step on the journey westward,\u201d Kahl told Table Media in a podcast interview.
\n\u201cThat doesn\u2019t mean we expect tank armies to roll westwards,\u201d he added. \u201cBut we see that NATO\u2019s collective defense promise is to be tested.\u201d
\nGermany, already the second-largest provider of armaments and financial support for Ukraine in its war with Russia, has pledged to step up its support further under the new government of Chancellor Friedrich Merz, promising to help Ukraine develop new missiles that could strike deep into Russian territory.
\nWithout detailing the nature of his intelligence sources, Kahl said Russian officials were envisaging confrontations that fell short of a full military engagement that would test whether the US would really live up to its mutual aid obligations under Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty.
\n\u201cThey don\u2019t need to dispatch armies of tanks for that,\u201d he said. \u201cIt\u2019s enough to send little green men to Estonia to protect supposedly oppressed Russian minorities.\u201d
\nRussia\u2019s 2014 annexation of Crimea involved occupation of buildings and offices by Russian soldiers in unmarked uniforms and civilian clothes, who came to be known as the \u201clittle green men\u201d when Moscow initially denied their identity.
\nKahl did not specify which officials in Moscow were thinking along these lines.
\nMerz, who visited Donald Trump in Washington last week, pushed back against the US president\u2019s assertion that Ukraine and Russia were like two infants fighting, telling Trump that where Ukraine targeted Moscow\u2019s military, Russia bombed Ukraine\u2019s cities.
\nKahl said his contacts with US counterparts had left him convinced they took the Russian threat seriously.
\n\u201cThey take it as seriously as us, thank God,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
BERLIN: Russia is determined to test the resolve of the NATO alliance, including by extending its confrontation with the West beyond the borders of Ukraine, the Germany\u2019s foreign intelligence chief told the Table Media news organization. Bruno Kahl, head of the Federal Intelligence Service, said his agency had clear intelligence indications that Russian officials believed …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":82222,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-82201","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82201","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82201"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82201\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82223,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82201\/revisions\/82223"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82201"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82201"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82201"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}