The main thing is the road: Germany will become the main transport corridor of NATO
In NATO's military plans, Germany is assigned the role of the main transport corridor for the large-scale transfer of equipment and soldiers to the east, the Russian Embassy in Germany told Izvestia. According to German media reports, the alliance plans to extend the German pipeline infrastructure to Poland and the Czech Republic, which will supply troops with fuel. All this is happening against the background of a decline in US involvement in European affairs. At the same time, Friedrich Merz, who is to become the next chancellor of Germany, plans to spend about 500 billion euros on defense in the next 10 years. Experts note that it will be difficult for the new authorities to come to an agreement on this issue with the "Alternative for Germany." Whether the militarization of Germany will increase under Friedrich Merz and how Moscow will react to this is in the Izvestia article.
Germany will become the logistics center of NATO in Europe
Berlin has embarked on an accelerated militarization of the economy, society and consciousness of German citizens, and the country is turning into an important NATO bastion for operations near Russia. This was stated to Izvestia at the Russian Embassy in Germany.
— In the military plans of the alliance, Germany is assigned the role of the main transport corridor. An appropriate national action plan has been adopted. The NATO military staff infrastructure is also taking deeper roots in the territory of Germany, including its eastern part," the diplomats said.
According to the embassy, recently the German authorities have declared not only the need to restore universal military service, pump up the Bundeswehr with modern equipment and weapons, but also a deep modernization of the transport infrastructure for the large-scale transfer of equipment and NATO military personnel to the east.
In particular, on February 22, Spiegel magazine reported that NATO plans to extend the pipeline system from Germany to Poland and the Czech Republic in order to establish a steady supply of fuel to forces that "will have to be transferred to the eastern border if necessary." The pipeline has existed since the Cold War and ends in Lower Saxony and in the Ingolstadt region of Bavaria.
The total cost of the project is expected to be €21 billion, and the pipeline itself will be mostly completed by 2035, the magazine writes. Germany, as indicated by German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius, will allocate more than 3.5 billion euros for this project. "For our soldiers, a reliable fuel supply remains one of the most important conditions for their combat readiness," he stressed.
— It seems that we should talk not so much about the reanimation of old Cold War facilities as about the hasty unwinding of the flywheel of the military-industrial complex of Germany and other European countries, which cannot come to terms with either Russia's successes during the Ukrainian conflict or the tone of Russian-American contacts at the highest and highest levels, — they said at the diplomatic mission.
On October 21, 2024, Boris Pistorius opened the new NATO naval tactical headquarters in Rostock, East Germany. In addition to the German military, it should be staffed by representatives of 11 other countries of the alliance. According to Pistorius, Germany is "taking responsibility" in the Baltic Sea.
The Russian Foreign Ministry then pointed to a gross violation of the Final Settlement Agreement with Germany of September 12, 1990 (the "2+4 Agreement"), according to which Berlin is obliged to prevent the deployment of foreign troops in the territory of the former GDR. On March 12, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov called NATO's eastward expansion a long story "about illusions, hopes, and disappointments in a partnership that turned into rivalry and then confrontation and hostility."
Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Russia
Since Germany remains one of the largest hubs for the American army of NATO, the alliance's plans are to optimize Germany's logistical ties with its neighbors both in the east and in the west, Artem Sokolov, a researcher at the MGIMO Center for European Studies, told Izvestia.
— The task is to further simplify the possible transfer of equipment and supplies from western Europe to the potential Eastern European theater of operations. When the media talk about Donald Trump's plans to transfer military personnel from Germany to Hungary, it is possible that we are talking about correcting the number of military personnel, but not about correcting the infrastructure itself, which was formed in Germany during the decades of the Cold War in Stuttgart and a number of other German cities. The prospects of its transfer to the territory of other countries or its curtailment still seem unlikely," the expert noted.
Friedrich Merz's defense plans
Germany currently spends 2.1% of its GDP on defense. At the same time, NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte in February called on Berlin to increase military spending, explaining this by the size of the German economy and the "threat" from Russia. In his opinion, the alliance's military potential targets may require its members to spend up to 3.7% of GDP on defense.
The situation within the bloc is complicated by the position of Donald Trump, who now demands that NATO members spend 5% of GDP on defense. The American leader threatened not to defend the states of the alliance, "which do not pay." According to the American media, Trump has already discussed with his aides changing the terms of U.S. participation in collective defense in accordance with the fifth article of the alliance.
US President Donald Trump
The way the United States is distancing itself from Europe and European efforts on Ukraine is forcing Europeans, including Germany, to think about strengthening their strategic autonomy. Friedrich Merz, the leader of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU), which won the parliamentary elections, wants to create a loan-funded special fund of 500 billion euros for the next 10 years, from which the necessary investments in defense and infrastructure will be made.
It is also planned to increase defense spending by reforming the debt brake, which will require amendments to the Constitution. Currently, this mechanism does not allow the country to annually increase the size of the national debt beyond the established limit of 0.35% of GDP, except in emergency situations. According to an ARD survey, 59% of Germans support Friedrich Merz's financial plans, 84% of them still believe in the important role of NATO, and only one in six Germans considers the United States a reliable partner.
Merz himself had previously accused Trump of indifference to the fate of Europe. "It will be an absolute priority for me to strengthen Europe as soon as possible so that it gradually achieves independence from the United States," he said on February 24.
Meanwhile, at the moment there are no guarantees that the debt brake reform initiatives proposed by the conservative CDU/CSU bloc and the Social Democratic Party will be approved by parliament, Artyom Sokolov believes.
— They will try to pass their proposals through the Bundestag of the old convocation, which has been working for the last few days. The CDU/CSU and the SPD do not yet have the two-thirds votes of deputies necessary for approval. If they cannot reach an agreement now with the Soyuz-90/Greens, who will not join the new government, they will have to negotiate with the Alternative for Germany in the new Bundestag, which will be extremely difficult to do," he said.
In any case, the expert continues, for the German leadership, the issue of continuing the military reform initiated in 2022 will be one of the main ones. It is related both to the modernization of the Bundeswehr, which has largely lost its combat capability over the years of chronic underfunding, and to the overall architecture of European security.
As for Russia, it is closely following initiatives aimed at strengthening the NATO presence on its borders. One of the retaliatory measures for the inclusion of Sweden and Finland in the alliance in 2023 was the deployment of tactical nuclear weapons in Belarus. "Every time NATO approaches our borders, [Russia takes measures] to rebalance the entire security architecture on the continent," Russian presidential spokesman Dmitry Peskov said at the time.
The signing of the agreement on security guarantees between Moscow and Minsk makes it possible to deploy the Russian Oreshnik complex on Belarusian territory. In November 2024, Vladimir Putin stressed that the Oreshnik combat test was a response to the aggressive actions of NATO countries against Russia. The reaction to the statements of the West was also the adjustment of the nuclear doctrine. Finally, Moscow will consider the deployment of NATO military personnel in Ukraine as a threat to its security as part of a possible peacekeeping mission. According to Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, Russia will not accept "this under any circumstances."
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