WARSAW: Germany’s top military official warned on Thursday that Russia could be ready to attack NATO nations in five to eight years if it decides to do so.
Lieutenant General Carsten Breuer told reporters during a visit to Poland that Russia could take such a move once it comes out of the impact of the Ukraine war.
He said Russia could reconstitute its forces to a level that an attack against NATO soil could be possible.
The general said he was not saying it will happen but there is a possibility.
Russia’s war on Ukraine in February 2022 has sparked the deepest crisis in Moscow’s ties with the West since the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
However, Moscow has regularly dismissed Western suggestions that it might attack NATO states terming it a complete nonsense.
President Vladimir Putin last month reiterated that Russia had no plans against any NATO country, though he warned of shooting down any F-16 fighters supplied by the West to Ukraine.
Out of NATO’s 32-member states, six European nations share a border with Russia, namely, Norway, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.
Russia now controls almost a fifth of Ukrainian territory including the Crimea peninsula it annexed in 2014.
Breuer, Germany’s chief of defense, said that Russia is producing a lot of war material and it is not putting all of this arsenal to the frontline in Ukraine.
“What we see is a threat in five to eight years.”
Currently, the number of Ukrainian armed forces number stands at around 800,000, while Putin in December ordered Russia’s forces to be increased by 170,000 troops to 1.3 million.
