A NATO official has shared a ‘concerning update’ in recent comments about Russia.
Yesterday (1 June), Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) shared that it had destroyed over 40 military aircraft in a drone attack inside Russia’s territory.
And while it is said to have caused about £5 billion in damage, having took out ’34 percent of [Russia’s] strategic cruise missile carriers’, Germany’s chief of defence has said Vladimir Putin’s nation was producing hundreds of tanks a year.
General Carsten Breuer said many of these could be used for an attack on Nato Baltic state members by 2029 - or perhaps earlier.
He explained that NATO (made up of 32 members including the UK, US, France and Germany) was facing a ‘very serious threat’ from Russia.
"Not every single tank is going to [the war in] Ukraine, but it's also going in stocks and into new military structures always facing the West," he told the BBC.
Gathered from German and allied nations’ analysts he stressed there is an ‘intent’ and a ‘build up of the stocks for a possible future attack’.
“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," General Breuer added.
This comes as Germany shared a warning about a ‘very serious’ threat from the nation. NATO top commander Chris Cavoli echoed these concerns.
He told the Senate Armed Services Committee that Russia was working at an ‘unprecedented pace’ to replace troops, tanks and munitions. The official said that the nation is on course ‘to build a stockpile three times greater than the United States and Europe combined’.
And in case those comments from both Germany and Nato weren’t enough to make this feel real, a former head of our Army has echoed a need to be ready.
Lord Dannatt, the former chief of the general staff told BBC Radio 4’s World at One the government needs to get over to the people of our country the nature of the threat that we currently face from an aggressive Vladimir Putin’s Russia’.
With the strategic defence review said to be published, Sir Keir Starmer has said that the government will adopt a ‘NATO-first’ stance towards defence. He also added while speaking in Glasgow that ‘we are moving to war-fighting readiness as the central purpose of our armed forces.
The Prime Minister said: “Third, we will innovate and accelerate innovation at a wartime pace, so we can meet the threats of today and of tomorrow, as the fastest innovator in NATO.”