Germany has three years to overhaul military: Official - War in Ukraine
Defence spending has risen up the political agenda since Russia launched its invasion of Ukraine in 2022, and more recently with the United States pushing NATO members to increase their commitments.
"Everything necessary to be fully prepared to defend the country must be acquired by 2028," Annette Lehnigk-Emden, head of the Federal Office for Military Procurement, told Tagesspiegel newspaper.
Chief of defence General Carsten Breuer recently warned that Russia could be in a position to "launch a large-scale attack against NATO territory" as early as 2029.
He said there was a Russian build-up of ammunition and tanks for a possible attack on NATO's Baltic members.
Lehnigk-Emden stressed that Chancellor Friedrich Merz's new government was enabling the upgrade by allocating hundreds of billions of euros for defence.
She said the priority would be for heavy equipment such as Skyranger anti-aircraft tanks.
Merz has made rearmament a priority of his coalition government to make it "the most powerful conventional army in Europe".
Rearmament had already begun under the previous government of Olaf Scholz after Russia launched its war in Ukraine.
And US President Donald Trump has raised the temperature further this year by pushing NATO members to increase their defence spending to five percent of GDP from the current level of two percent.
Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said on Thursday that 50,000 to 60,000 new soldiers would be needed in the coming years to meet the increased defence needs of NATO.
Last year, the army had more than 180,000 soldiers and set a goal of exceeding 203,000 by 2031.
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Egypt Independent
36 minutes ago
- Egypt Independent
In Alaska, Trump gifts Putin more time to grind down Ukraine
Kyiv, Ukraine — It was not the applause, or the red carpet, or the ride in the Beast, or speaking first on the podium, that were the biggest gifts offered up to Vladimir Putin at the Alaska summit. President Donald Trump's greatest favor to his Russian counterpart was time. Even as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky heads to Washington on Monday with a phalanx of European leaders to hold hurried talks with Trump, the war grinds on. Russian success or failure on the front line will be measured in a matter of weeks. Putin has until mid-October until the weather cools, ground softens, and advances become harder. That is a full two months. His forces are on the brink of turning painfully incremental and costly micro-advances into 'nowhere' villages in eastern Ukraine into a more strategic gain. Almost every day, another settlement falls. The secondary sanctions Trump has threatened – which would penalize those buying Russian oil and gas – and has now twice backed away, would not stop Putin's war effort this year. But it has already clearly piled pressure on him, in the forms of calls from the leaders of India and China, and may have led him to accept the invitation to meet with Trump in Alaska, where he was welcomed so graciously. Putin does not want to maintain a lengthy war effort under economic pressure from his two main energy customers and effective sponsors, themselves having to endure tariff pain from the United States. And so, he is in a rush on the battlefield, but agonizingly slow at the negotiating table. An oil tanker passes storage tanks at an oil refinery in Mumbai, India, on August 11. Washington is ratcheting up the pressure on New Delhi over oil flows from Russia with a wave of new tariffs. Abeer Khan/Bloomberg/Getty Images Trump's instincts correctly assessed that reality in Anchorage, his pained expression belying the positive claims from Russian and American staffers of how well the meeting had gone. Getting on well with another president you have welcomed with clapping and a limousine is not real diplomatic progress. And he perhaps knew that. In truth, Alaska did not go as awfully as it could have for Kyiv. Ukrainians had to endure a relatively brief revisionist history lesson from Putin at the podium, and the distasteful repetition of how Ukraine and Russia are 'brotherly' nations, despite Moscow's nightly murder of Ukrainian civilians in air assaults. But there were two positive notes for Kyiv. Firstly, Trump and Putin did not cook up a madcap, real-estate, Sharpie-map peace deal in a hurry, that was short on detail and heavy on wins for Moscow, as some had feared they might. The opposite happened – no deal emerged. The second gain for Ukraine is that the intransigent nature of Putin – despite all of Trump's fawning – was widely on display. Trump appeared sullen: no lunch, no questions from the press, no return invitation to Moscow unequivocally accepted, and even the suggestion, in an interview with Fox News, that – of all things – he wished he hadn't agreed to talk to network host Sean Hannity. At the end, Trump apparently did not want to be there, and Putin may be in error to have made him feel that way. But the evolution of Trump's thinking is not all a win for Zelensky. Paramount is the overnight evaporation of a demand for a ceasefire. It was the bedrock of European and Ukrainian thinking last week, and even crept into Trump's talking points ahead of Alaska. But Putin has never wanted one, as it would stop his military advances. And so, as of Saturday morning, the demand has vanished and the focus shifted to a quick, enduring peace deal. There is no such thing; a lasting deal could take weeks to formulate, if not much longer. But European leaders stepped back from their ceasefire demand in their Saturday joint statement and Zelensky even said the 'killing must stop as soon as possible' rather than preconditioning further talks on a ceasefire. Trump also took whatever the bad deal was that Putin proposed, and turned it into pressure on the resilient victim – Kyiv. It would be Zelensky's decision what to do next, and Trump urged him to take the deal. Destruction caused by Russian glide bomb strikes on the front-line city of Kostiantynivka in the Donbas region of eastern Ukraine is pictured on March 21. Thomas Krych/Anadolu/Getty Images The proposed deal, from what we know, seems potentially quite bad for Ukraine. One European official told CNN that Putin had persisted with his demands for control of all of the Donbas region – something politically and practically impossible for Zelensky to concede, and which he's already rejected. This part-maximalist demand emerged after US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff's meeting in the Kremlin earlier this month, with added confusion over whether this demand meant Putin had given up on claiming the rest of the Kherson and Zaporizhzhia regions, now partially occupied by Russian forces. But Putin is a studied, patient pragmatist. He can take what he can now and then come back for the rest later. He has no electoral cycles to worry about, given his grip on the country, although likely knows his overheated and hyper-militarized economy cannot keep going like this indefinitely. In his post-talks remarks, Putin remained set on what he considers the 'root causes' of the conflict being fixed — which have previously included Ukraine's existence as a sovereign state and NATO's eastward expansion since the end of the Cold War – and on 'peace' for Ukraine, which effectively means its surrender and more dead civilians. He even ominously urged Europeans and Ukraine to not get in the way of whatever proposal he had floated at Trump. Trump has not fully fallen for this play. His Monday meeting in the Oval Office with Zelensky will likely reveal an evolution in their relationship, and Trump's view of Putin, since their ghastly February blowout. It will be another moment when, whatever Zelensky hears, he will have travelled with only one option available to him, and that is to nod along and play nice. But this time, Zelensky will be flanked by more than half a dozen key European leaders, and Trump perhaps is mindful they are better buddies to him than Putin has been. Whether this united front can persuade Trump remains to be seen. While standing next to Zelensky at a press conference, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen affirmed that Ukraine must become a 'steel porcupine' to deter future invasions. Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, meets with US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, right, at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia on August 6. Kremlin Press Office/Anadolu/Getty Images The problem for Ukraine is not how the circus of diplomacy plays out, but the horrors outside of the tent. The time it would likely take to bring the parties together for further talks could be all Putin needs on the battlefield to effect real change. The coming weeks are the slow limp forwards that Putin wants: Tension between Trump and Zelensky first, followed by European pressure on Trump to ease off on Zelensky, followed by awkward and technical stalling over a three-way meeting between Trump, Putin and Zelensky. Putin only has to claim scheduling or location conflicts for a week to buy yet more time. Then a trilateral meeting, if there is one, only risks repeating the cycle again; Putin makes unreasonable demands he knows Ukraine cannot accept, Trump pressures Zelensky to accept them to get quick points on the board, and European leaders lean on Trump to recall that Ukraine's security is also theirs. And rinse and repeat. Time. Putin needs it to conquer. Trump hates wasting it without points on the board. Zelensky's forces do not have it. European leaders hope it erodes Russia's economic ability to fight. Much of it has passed since Trump came to power promising to end the war in 24 hours, and while he is clearly wiser to Putin than in February, little in terms of the hard dynamics and demands of this war have changed.
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Egypt Independent
15 hours ago
- Egypt Independent
Zelensky and European leaders face tough choices at pivotal White House showdown
At what was billed as an 'historic' presidential summit, hastily put together in Alaska on Friday afternoon, the optics were as clear and overshadowing as the vast Chugach mountains glistening over Anchorage in the summer sun. US President Donald Trump literally applauded Vladimir Putin as he walked along a red carpet laid out in his honor by genuflecting US troops. After warmly greeting the Russian president, whose full-scale invasion of Ukraine has so far left more than a million people dead and injured, a US B-2 stealth bomber, flanked by fighter jets, roared overhead. But Putin seemed unintimidated by the spectacle. This was, after all, his long-awaited coming out of international isolation party; a political gift bestowed upon the Kremlin strongman, who is indicted for war crimes at the International Criminal Court, by a US president who called him his friend, 'Vladimir.' Later, in the windowless press room on Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson near Anchorage, where the White House and Kremlin press pools had gathered wrongly expecting a joint news conference, we found ourselves positioned alongside an energetic, tight-suited reporter from one of the radically conservative news networks who seem to vie for Trump's favor. 'Trump is determined to exit Biden's war,' the reporter confided to me between live shots, referring to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine that began in 2022 when Joe Biden was US president. 'But the Ukrainians and the Europeans are in his way,' the reporter added, seemingly frustrated, as Trump, at the reluctance to accept any deal at any price. Russian President Vladimir Putin and US President Donald Trump meet at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska, on Friday. Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty Images The comment points to an even bigger, though less obvious, Putin victory than merely returning to the top table of international diplomacy: In pursuit of a quick peace deal in Ukraine, the US president appears to have taken Russia's side on key issues in the conflict. A ceasefire, for example. Ukraine and its European supporters have long argued that halting the violence must be an essential first step in peace talks. Trump, who had earlier accepted that, has apparently changed his mind, posting on his Truth Social platform about going for a full peace deal instead, a long-standing preference of the Kremlin, which sees no benefit in halting offensive operations at a time when it believes Russian forces have the upper hand. As Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, flanked by European leaders, prepares for direct and urgent talks with Trump, this about-face by the White House will be at the forefront of concerns and negotiations – alongside demands by Putin, and perhaps Trump too, for Kyiv to withdrawal from swathes of strategic territory in the Donbas region of Ukraine that has been annexed by Russia but not yet conquered. That may ultimately be a red line neither Ukraine nor Europe is willing to cross. Signing up to such a deal, which would involve pulling out of the so-called fortress belt of heavily defended Ukrainian towns and cities that have prevented Russian forces from advancing even deeper into Ukraine, would be seen as a security disaster on the continent. Ukrainian and European leaders are likely to push back hard in Washington on these territorial demands, but in doing so risk casting themselves – in the eyes of the White House, at least – as the real obstacles to peace. And saying no to a quick deal that Trump supports, with thoughts of a Nobel Peace Prize within his grasp, could push the mercurial US president to lash out, perhaps cutting off crucial intelligence sharing again, or military aid. Meanwhile, as Putin's forces relentlessly advance on the frontlines, he must be watching all this with some satisfaction. The fact a major territorial concession is being discussed at all is itself, from the Kremlin's point of view, yet another important win. While Ukraine and its Western backers haggle over how much more of Donbas Kyiv should surrender, the land Russia has already captured by brute force is barely mentioned at all. But in the days and the weeks ahead, as the success or failure of peace talks inevitably dominate the news agenda, it's worth acknowledging that it is Trump – not Putin – who is now driving this process forward and that the US President's objectives are not necessarily the same as those of Europe or Ukraine. Ukrainian servicemen fire a multiple rocket launch system towards Russian troops near the frontline town of Pokrovsk, in Ukraine's Donetsk region, on June 8. Anatolii Stepanov/Reuters That means there must also be concern about any promised US security guarantees – another key issue in peace negotiations, aimed at preventing the Kremlin from relaunching its war once the it has secured any peace deal advantage. A threat of US military action if, for instance, Russian violates a peace deal, must be credible if it is to be an effective deterrent. But with Trump pressuring for an end to the conflict and US involvement in it, the Kremlin may judge any US security guarantees as hollow in the current climate. Trump wants this war off his hands, a quick win. European security is not his paramount concern. Economic gain, and possible business deals with Russia, appear to be more of a priority, as it the idea of taking his place in a pantheon of leaders who bend the world to their will. Back at anticlimactic Alaskan summit, it was striking how deferential a usually domineering Trump appeared, even allowing Putin – a foreign guest on American soil – to speak first in the joint statements to the press. The US president stood listening quietly at his podium for several minutes as the Kremlin leader held forth on Alaska's Russian and American history before delivering his own impressions of the day's meetings. It was almost as if Putin, who confidently suggested Trump visit Moscow – in a rare English-language remark from the Russian president – was accepting Trump back into the fold, not the other way around; reintroducing him to the world from Alaska as a fellow strongman, with immense power, many thousands of miles away from the petty concerns of Ukraine and Europe.
