A "secret document" from the German Defense Ministry detailing a possible "path to conflict" between Russia and NATO is revealed on its website by Bild, the popular and informed German newspaper. "Month by month and with a precise location, Russian and Western actions are described, culminating in the deployment of hundreds of thousands of NATO soldiers and the imminent outbreak of war in the summer of 2025," the newspaper writes, summarizing the document "Classified - For Official Use Only."
A spokesman for the ministry, without commenting specifically, told Bild that "considering different scenarios, even if they are extremely unlikely, is part of daily military activity, especially in training." The scenario outlined by the Bundeswehr, the German Armed Forces, is entitled "Defense Alliance 2025" and begins in February 2024 with a recall of another 200,000 military personnel by Russia, followed by "a spring offensive - supported by faltering Western support for Kyiv" - with major successes by June. In July, "heavy cyberattacks and other forms of hybrid warfare, especially in the Baltic region, lead to ever new crises", with Russian instigation of its own ethnic minorities on the Baltic: there are clashes used as a pretext to launch a large-scale maneuver called "Zapad 2024" with "50,000 soldiers in western Russia and Belarus starting in September", summarizes Bild out of quotation marks. According to the document, the Kremlin's goal is to conquer the "Suwalki Corridor", the narrow Polish-Lithuanian land passage between Belarus and Kaliningrad: again according to the scenario, from December 2024 there would be a "border conflict" just as "the United States could be more or less leaderless for a few weeks" following a possible electoral defeat of Joe Biden. In the scenario in May 2025, NATO decides on "credible deterrence measures" to prevent a Russian attack on the Suwalki Gap and, on "day X", orders the deployment of 300,000 soldiers, including 30,000 Bundeswehr soldiers, to confront more than 200,<> Russians: "whether Russia will be deterred from NATO deployment, in the exercise scenario remains an open question", writes Bild.
The reply: Bild "does not hesitate to write hoaxes, so I would prefer not to comment." This is how Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov reports Russian agencies.
All rights reserved © Copyright ANSA