this post was submitted on 12 Jun 2025
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The chief of Germany’s foreign intelligence service warned that his agency has “concrete” evidence that Russia is planning an attack on Nato territory.

Bruno Kahl, the outgoing head of Germany’s federal intelligence service (BND), said in a rare interview that Russian leadership no longer believes Nato’s article 5 guarantee of mutual assistance will be honoured — and may seek to test it.

“We are very sure, and we have intelligence evidence to back this up, that [Russia’s full-scale invasion of] Ukraine is only one step on Russia’s path towards the west,” he told a podcast of German outlet Table Briefings.

Kahl qualified that “this doesn’t mean that we expect large tank battalions to roll from the east to the west.”

Kahl said: “We see that Nato is supposed to be tested in its mutual assistance promise. There are people in Moscow who don’t believe that Nato’s article 5 still works.”

[...]

While the war is still confined to Ukrainian territory, the German internal secret service, the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV), has warned that Moscow is increasingly extending the conflict to western countries through cyberwarfare and espionage.

Russia has in particular taken to deploying so-called low-level agents to commit acts of sabotage, according to the BfV annual report, which was presented in Berlin on Wednesday. They are believed to have been deployed to plant incendiary devices in parcels, which caused a series of fires in European logistics hubs last year.

“We have noticed that Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine has led to our cyber and espionage defences being increasingly tested,” Sinan Selim, vice-president of the BfV, said.

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[–] MedicPigBabySaver@lemmy.world 10 points 7 hours ago

Russia will fuck with the EU.

EU will react with: "Stop it!".

[–] selkiesidhe@lemm.ee 30 points 15 hours ago (4 children)

The world would improve significantly without Putin. Just sayin'...

The TACO puppet in the US wouldn't be nearly as bold if he didn't have a Russian fist up his ass, for one.

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[–] bieren@lemmy.zip 16 points 15 hours ago (1 children)

This will probably happen around the same time Israel and Iran escalates. I mean, that is when I would do it.

[–] Korhaka@sopuli.xyz 6 points 13 hours ago (2 children)

Could China/Taiwan happen around the same time

[–] Hupf@feddit.org 3 points 5 hours ago (1 children)

It's almost like half the World is going to War

[–] webghost0101@sopuli.xyz 6 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

We could call it a “world war” for short.

[–] GreenKnight23@lemmy.world 2 points 9 hours ago

let's just say if you can leave Taiwan, now would be a fantastic time.

[–] MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 28 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago) (9 children)

well, don't count on the US for help, thats for sure.

Unless nato countries band together and go full force to stop whatever comes their way though, they are in huge amounts of danger. It won't just be Russia coming for them. It will be China, Iran, North Korea, and every other Fascio-dictatorship out there. Possibly even the US, at that point.

I said it before trump got elected in 2016 and no one listened to me. If NATO countries wanted to help themselves, they would have done a lot more to help the US keep its elections legitimate. Instead they did practically nothing.

[–] tomi000@lemmy.world 4 points 11 hours ago (1 children)

Possibly even the US? Are you joking? I am completely convinced that right after Russia the US is the next most likely country to invade EU in the next few years. Maybe even more likely as Russia cant make it past Ukraine.

[–] MangioneDontMiss@lemmy.ca 1 points 8 hours ago

even more reason the EU shouldn't have sat it on its hands while Russia destroyed our country.

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[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 51 points 20 hours ago* (last edited 20 hours ago) (7 children)

So, say that Russia tests article 5. This has one of two possible outcomes.

  • Article 5 is not honoured which is "yay for Russia" though not very useful for them since militarily they're stuck in a self-dug pit in Ukraine so don't actually have the excess military power for handling anything more than a small nation like Montenegro. Meanwhile NATO is hardly going to stop supporting Ukraine (and in fact NATO nations might double up on that support if they feel that NATO doesn't work anymore as strategically it's the best way to militarily bleed Russia and make it less dangerous)
  • Article 5 is honoured. At which point, who knows how far NATO nations will go in crushing Russia to make sure an attack on a NATO nation doesn't happen ever again. At the very least Russia would be kicked out of Ukraine pretty quickly and lose pretty much all its air and naval assets.

My point is that this is a MASSIVE risk for Russia if they are wrong, with little concrete and currently achievable upsides if they are indeed right, mainly because they're stuck and bleeding in Ukraine and a logical fallback plan for European nations if NATO turns out to be toothless is to increase support of Ukraine even more, and specifically for the attacked nation it might even make sense to become a military ally of Ukraine since that's an ongoing fight in somebody else's territory.

So to me this sounds like bullshit or this "attack" Kahl is talking about is more of the same which they have already been doing: cyberwar, cutting submarine cables, financing extremist parties. social media disinfo and so on.

[–] Alfredolin@sopuli.xyz 2 points 1 hour ago

It sounds like what most (including me) have said before the conflict in Ukraine. I would personnaly not repeat that mistake and take the words of the BND head very seriously.

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 12 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

If Russia goes for the Baltic countries, it's possible that they have a chance. They have tiny militaries and really depend on Nato.

However, given the current status of the Union, I'm not sure I would be completely confident on Nato. Committing would be politically risky for any politician in the current context.
So while I hope Both unions stand strong (the EU also has a common defence clause), I'm not super confident. Because politicians are extremely short-sighted. And short-sightedness is pretty much what defines our species (that and greed, and stupidity).

And to add upon that, Russia (or more precisely the Russian Federation) has been attacking us for ten years now, maybe more. Article 5 ought to have been invoked before. They should have been dismantled by force years ago. I've said it before, but I'm saying it again: The Russian Federation has to be broken up into its member states, with Russia possibly getting a special treatment. They have to get a government that's under international surveilance for at least 20 years.

[–] red@sopuli.xyz 16 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago) (1 children)

I really don't see Russia having a chance against us (Finland), in any short term conflict. We're currently closing in to 900 000 troops in reserve.

Other Baltic countries withdrew from the Ottawa deal too, which means mines, mines, mines.

If the Russians can't breach Ukraine, they sure as hell won't breach the Baltics while simultaneously fighting Ukraine.

Edit: I just realized we aren't considered Baltic these days, even though we were referred as such historically (ww1&2 times).

[–] AnUnusualRelic@lemmy.world 8 points 15 hours ago

I was really thinking more of Estonia, Lituania and Latvia. That's what people usually mean by Baltic countries. Finland has already shown Russia that it's probably not a good idea to invade. And I think both the Finns and the Russians haven't forgotten each other.

[–] rayyy@lemmy.world 24 points 19 hours ago (2 children)

Putin will do a small attack that involves plausible deniability or doesn't trigger an Article 5 response, then push that a little more later on. He might even deny that it was Russia or he might even use foreign troops to muddy the attack. He is testing NATO.

[–] Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 15 hours ago

Still, what exactly does a game of ever increasing "poke the bear" achieve, given the massive risk that the bear gets angry and properly fucks them up?

Russia getting away with it ... until they don't ... is a pretty likely outcome, but the point were they stop getting away with it is almost certainly at or short of territorial invasion, which means that all their getting away with it until reaching that point will have delivered them no concrete gains - it would all be provocation for the sake of provocation until the moment they get mauled.

[–] linkshulkdoingit69@lemmy.nz 10 points 18 hours ago (2 children)

US forces have already been shot at by Wagner group in Syria

[–] Fusselwurm@feddit.org 11 points 16 hours ago* (last edited 16 hours ago)

and they got pulverized in response

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[–] CtrlAltDefeat@sh.itjust.works 16 points 17 hours ago

Be ready. Respond overwhelmingly and immediately

[–] Absaroka@lemmy.world 42 points 21 hours ago (4 children)

So I guess GPS jamming, Internet cable cutting, spreading misinformation, meddling with elections, Olympic sabotage, gas pipeline sabotage, cyberattacks, etc. etc. don't count?

[–] drmoose@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

I think the original article means more of this rather than land invasion. Russia will poke and prod to create chaos and continue destabilize europe.

The was uncertainty has been a huge blow to eastern europe's economy and it'll continue to be so. Economically weak population is more succeptible to proganda so it's easy to see how Russia doesn't need full invasion to hurt eastern europe bad to increase their influence there.

[–] vga@sopuli.xyz 11 points 19 hours ago

They definitely count as actions designed to test the limits of Article 5.

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[–] phoenixz@lemmy.ca 19 points 20 hours ago (9 children)

And by all means, NATo should then remind Russia what article 5 really means. Do not only repel that attack, wipe them out, follow the retreat back into Russia, take a large swaths of Russian territory away as punishment

Fuck Putin

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[–] Archangel1313@lemmy.ca 175 points 1 day ago (32 children)

More like, to test whether the US will follow article 5.

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