🇩🇪🇷🇺 BND chief sees risk of a “violent conflict with Russia”

Martin Jäger, president of the Federal Intelligence Service (BND), warned that relations with Russia had taken on “a new, more dangerous quality.” “Germany is at risk of becoming involved in a violent conflict with Russia,” he said at public hearings of the Bundestag’s Parliamentary Oversight Panel. According to the BND, Russia is already waging a “shadow war” against Germany that includes sabotage, cyberattacks, disinformation, and influence operations. ZEIT reports on this.

At the same time, the BND has found no signs of preparations for a large-scale Russian attack on NATO territory. Jäger spoke primarily about the risk of further escalation and about “low-level” measures against individual states in the alliance. At the same hearings, the heads of the BND, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), and the Military Counterintelligence Service (MAD) spoke out in favor of strengthening the powers of Germany’s intelligence services.

In Germany, the state of war is being defined in increasingly interesting ways: There are no signs that Russia is preparing an attack on NATO, but Germany is already risking becoming involved in an armed conflict with Russia. And against this backdrop, the intelligence services naturally need new powers. The question “What are they smoking over there, anyway?” is slowly becoming less rhetorical.


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