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Daily Mail
3 days ago
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Nato should prepare to be attacked by Putin warns Germany's defence chief – amid growing WWIII fears after Ukraine drones blitzed doomsday bombers worth billions in 'Russia's Pearl Harbour'
Germany 's defence chief has starkly warned that NATO should be prepared for a possible attack by Russia in the next four years. General Carsten Breuer told the BBC that Russia poses a 'very serious threat' to the Western defence bloc, the likes of which he has never seen in his 40-year military career.' The stark warning comes amid one of Ukraine's most audacious attacks, in which it used a swarm of kamikaze drones unleashed from the backs of trucks to devastate billions of dollars worth of equipment at two of Russia's most major airfields. Breuer pointed to the massive increase in Vladimir Putin's armoury and ammunitions stock, including a massive output of 1,500 main battle tanks every year as well as the four million rounds of 152mm artillery munition produced in 2024 alone. Breuer said that not all of these additional military equipment was going to Ukraine, which signalled a possible building up of capabilities that could be used against the NATO bloc, adding that Baltic states were at a particularly high risk of being attacked. 'There's an intent and there's a build up of the stocks' for a possible future attack on Nato's Baltic state members, he said. 'This is what the analysts are assessing - in 2029. So we have to be ready by 2029... If you ask me now, is this a guarantee that's not earlier than 2029? I would say no, it's not. So we must be able to fight tonight,' he said. Breuer said that the Suwalki Gap, a region that borders Lithuania, Poland, Russia and Belarus, was particularly vulnerable to Russian military activity. Military vehicles and soldiers parade through Red Square as part of the celebrations of the 80th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War at Red Square in Moscow, Russia on May 9, 2025 'The Baltic States are really exposed to the Russians, right? And once you are there, you really feel this... in the talks we are having over there,' he said. The Estonians, he said, had given the analogy of being close to a wildfire where they 'feel the heat, see the flames and smell the smoke', while in Germany 'you probably see a little bit of smoke over the horizon and not more'. Earlier this week, David Petraeus, a respected former US general and CIA chief, claimed Lithuania would be most at risk to an attack from Russia. He said Russia could launch an incursion into that Baltic state to test Western resolve or as a precursor to a wider offensive. Breuer urged fellow NATO nations to build up their militaries again, following a long period of demilitarisation across dozens of nations. 'What we have to do now is really to lean in and to tell everybody, hey, ramp up... get more into it because we need it. We need it to be able to defend ourselves and therefore also to build up deterrence', he said. But with NATO apparently falling apart, amid a surge of distrust between each of its member states, Breuer was quick to allay fears that NATO wouldn't be cohesive enough to fight Russia. He pointed to Finland and Sweden's ascension into the bloc: 'I've never seen such a unity like it is now' among nations and military leaders. 'All of them understand the threat that is at the moment approaching Nato, all understand that we have to develop a direction of deterrence, into the direction of collective defence. This is clear to everyone. The urgency is seen.' NATO members Hungary and Slovakia have, since Russia invaded Ukraine, have developed closer relations with Putin, in many instances using their powers in groups like the EU and NATO to push the dictator's agenda. And US president Donald Trump, who commands the largest military in the bloc, has consistently sided with Putin on military matters, especially when it comes to NATO. Just yesterday his envoy to Ukraine, Keith Kellogg, declared that Russia's historic feud with NATO were 'fair.' Asked by ABC News about a Reuters report that Russia wanted a written pledge over NATO not enlarging eastwards to include Ukraine and other former Soviet republics, Kellogg said: 'It's a fair concern.' 'We've said that to us, Ukraine coming into NATO is not on the table, and we're not the only country that says that'. Shortly before Breuer's comments, Ukraine launched one of its most audacious attacks of the war using a 'swarm' of kamikaze drones unleashed from the backs of trucks to devastate two of Russia's most major airfields. Dubbed 'Operation Spiderweb', the co-ordinated strikes have left Vladimir Putin humiliated and his prized warplanes in smouldering ruins, though Moscow has claimed to have 'repelled' all the attacks. Two remote military airfields, Olenya in the Arctic Murmansk region and Belaya in eastern Siberia, were rocked by massive explosions overnight, with dramatic footage showing fires raging for hours. The bases, located thousands of miles from Ukraine, are key to Russia's nuclear strike capability and were considered untouchable. Yet Ukraine appears to have struck them with deadly precision, using first-person-view (FPV) drones launched from unmarked vans parked near the airfields. Both are thousands of miles from Ukraine but were 'under drone attack', with dozens of Moscow 's nuclear capable warplanes evidently destroyed. The Russian army launched a combined strike on the Dniprovskyi district of Kherson, Ukraine Olenya airbase is home to Russia 's ageing fleet of Tu-95 'Bear' bombers - used both for conventional missile strikes and capable of launching nuclear weapons against the West. Several of the aircraft were reportedly left exposed in the open, despite repeated Ukrainian attacks on similar facilities. Ablaze, too, was Belaya nuclear airbase in eastern Siberia's Irkutsk region - some 2,900 miles from Ukraine. More alarmingly, the strikes have triggered frenzied calls within Russia's military circles for a nuclear response. 'Disabling strategic aircraft gives Russia the right to use nuclear weapons,' declared pro-Kremlin war analyst Vladislav Pozdnyakov. 'Let me remind you.' Russia's nuclear doctrine allows for a nuclear response in the event of an attack on 'critical government or military infrastructure'. In particular, 'an enemy attack that disrupts the operation of nuclear forces, threatening Russia's ability to respond' could lead to Putin ordering an atomic strike. Ukraine's SBU secret service was reportedly conducting a large-scale special operation to destroy Russian bombers. The Ukrainian media claimed more than 40 Putin aircraft had been hit, including Tu-95, Tu-22M3, and A-50 strategic bombers. The damage to the enemy was alleged to exceed £1.5billion. A driver of a truck filled with drones that attacked Olenegorsk in Murmansk 'may not have known about the cargo', said a report. According to Baza media, the driver has been detained. 'A truck stopped at a gas station at the entrance to the city… drones started flying out of the back of the truck and then attacked various objects,' said a report. A similar account was heard from Siberia but there are no official comments yet. This video grab from a handout footage released by Russia's emergency ministry on June 1, 2025 shows specialists working at the scene after a road bridge collapsed onto a railway line late on May 31, 2025 The overnight collapse of two bridges in Russian regions bordering Ukraine that killed seven people were caused by explosions Ukraine's Pravda Gerashchenko Telegram channel said: 'A special operation 'Web' is being conducted to demilitarise Russia. 'The [SBU] report the destruction of Russian bomber aircraft behind enemy lines. ' In particular, the destruction of more than 40 aircraft, including A-50, Tu-95 and Tu-22M3.' The audacious strike was described as 'Russia's Pearl Harbour' and the 'blackest day in aviation' for the country by pro-Putin Telegram channels. Russia's ministry of defence said in a Telegram post that Ukraine had carried out a 'terrorist attack' in the regions of Murmansk, Irkutsk, Ivanovo, Ryazan and Amur. It claimed that all of the attacks were 'repelled', adding: 'As a result of the launch of FPV drones from the territory located in the immediate vicinity of airfields, several pieces of aviation equipment caught fire.'
Yahoo
21-03-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Vulnerable NATO countries are turning to mines, away from US
The Trump administration floated the idea of withdrawing from NATO in his first term. That relationship is already rockier this time, just two months into a four-year term. It appears that the most vulnerable members of NATO are preparing for a new reality where the U.S. doesn't back up NATO or even deter Russia in general. To prepare for Russian aggression in this brave new world, the most vulnerable members of NATO—Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and Poland—have announced that they're withdrawing from a landmark ban on military mines. When I was in the Army, one of the common training scenarios at the brigade headquarters level was a war in Europe. The conflict often centered on the Suwalki Gap. All the country names were changed for the exercise and, sometimes, even a few borders, but the gap always remained. We've written about this gap before, a thin strip of the Polish-Lithuanian border that runs east-west between Belarus and Russia's Kaliningrad Enclave. If Russia struck through the gap, it could sever the three Baltic countries from the rest of NATO. Without going into too much detail, our exercises often called for either 1) Repelling the Russian attack or, 2) Expelling Russians from the gap. The first was often challenging since it took time to get units into place against a surprise attack. But the second scenario was many times worse. With enough time, Russian units could dig into the grass plains of Europe. Picking the ticks out would cost buckets of European and American blood. For decades, America promised that it would do so. The foreign policy logic was simple: Preventing World War III was much less costly than fighting it. So we sent arms and armies to help keep the peace, and we promised that we'd fight if anyone broke the peace. And Europe avoided large-scale conflict for almost 80 years. But the expanded Russian invasion of Ukraine in 2022 has triggered the largest European land war since World War II. The U.S. is loudly threatening to leave NATO and is even musing buying or taking territory from a NATO country. Many European leaders today either remember living under Soviet occupation or heard stories of it from their parents. They have no desire to see their people subjugated once again. So they need a strong, effective deterrent that doesn't rely on American equipment or guarantees. And so they're turning to mines. Mines are one of the few weapons that Hollywood gets largely correct. And that's probably because they're completely terrifying on their own, no need for exaggeration. Emplacers use mines of varying sizes, burying them in the ground with triggers built into them. The triggers reflect the kind of weapon that the mine attacks. It takes a larger tread or weight to trigger most anti-armor mines, for instance. Anti-personnel mines might trigger with just a few pounds of pressure. Russian armor dashing across the Suwalki Gap or else attacking from Belarus west into the Baltic countries would trigger the explosives, quickly tying up maneuver forces and their support elements. The slowed-down attackers would be easier targets for NATO artillery and other weapons. Previously, this task of stopping Russian armored columns could have been done by airpower and artillery. That's how the U.S. defended American special operators from a massive Russian attack by the Wagner mercenary group in Syria in 2018, with no losses to our service members. But that concentrated airpower requires a lot of combat aircraft and top-tier intelligence. And the U.S. is taking a lot of both if it leaves NATO. The fastest new deterrent that the Baltic countries could turn to is mining their own borders. That slows down a potential attack to make it easier for their infantry and artillery to repel. The problem for people who mine their own borders is that it makes it impossible for their people to use the territory, either. They have to mine potentially thousands of square miles of territory and then let it sit fallow. And weather or geological activity can shift mines over time, sometimes by hundreds of feet, making it hard to find them and to keep the public safe from them. Mines killed over 5,500 civilians in 2023, according to the Landmine Monitor 2024 report. Mines are so dangerous to civilians that most of the world signed a treaty banning them. The U.S. was one of the few major countries to never sign the ban. The U.S. came close enough to compliance under Obama and then Biden that it is no longer counted by the Landmine Monitor 2024 report as one of the 12 countries that use landmines. Ukraine was not counted either, though it has used mines and cluster munitions on its territory that is occupied or at high risk of Russian capture. Now, four countries are withdrawing from the anti-mine treaty, and it would be crazy to think the rest of NATO, especially those on the eastern flanks, aren't considering it. One of the other flank states, Finland, has over 12,000 mines 'retained for training purposes.' It could quickly deploy mines if it decided to. Landmines are relatively easy to manufacture, even for terrorist groups and other non-state actors. So once someone breaks the seal on using mines in a fight, it can quickly become a common tool for everyone in that fight. Mines are dangerous enough for civilians if military forces carefully employ them and map where they are placed. When terror groups start dropping mines, there's no formal registry where they can submit their maps even if they want to. So we're facing a potential expansion of a large-scale war in Europe and likely frontline nations are withdrawing from anti-mine treaties. Might be time to invest in personal demining equipment. Or study this fun flow chart of how to demine areas, a literal foot at a time.
