As German tabloid Bildzeitung leaks, in a (no longer) secret report, the German Ministry of Defense outlines in detail a possible “path to conflict” between Russia and the Western defense alliance. Both Russian and Western actions are described month by month. Among other things, the German military, the Bundeswehr, expects the mobilization of hundreds of thousands of NATO soldiers and an imminent outbreak of war in the summer of 2025, according to Bild. Fox News, in that understated style for which American tabloid journalism is admired throughout the world, headlined its story, “Leaked German Documents Show Leaders Are Preparing Should Russia Launch World War 3: Reports.”
Fox then lists a set of hysterical hypotheticals. “Bild described a scenario that shows Russia, by July, could begin launching ‘severe cyberattacks’ in the Baltics, drawing dissatisfaction from Russians living in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania. Then in September, clashes could escalate, according to the classified documents, and be used by Putin as a reason to launch the next phase called, ‘Zapad 2024,’ which is described as a large-scale military exercise involving about 50,000 Russian troops in Western Russia and Belarus.”
Bild reports that Russia wants to call up another 200,000 men into the army soon, in order to launch a new offensive against Ukraine beginning in the spring. In the summer months, Russia would then begin increasingly open attacks on the West—including heavy cyber attacks. The large-scale maneuver “Zapad 2024” with 50,000 soldiers in western Russia and Belarus, is set to begin in September. At the end of the year, there would be a Russian invasion of areas of eastern Ukraine, after which NATO would deploy around 300,000 soldiers to Ukraine’s eastern flank on “Day X” in the summer of 2025.
The Russian response? Yahoo News reported that “Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova characterized a recent journal in German newspaper Bild as ‘last year‘s horoscope for Pisces in Cancer,’ in a Telegram post on Jan. 15.” And even the German Ministry of Defense did not want to comment on the information. Only this much: “Basically, I can tell you that considering different scenarios—even if they are extremely unlikely—is part of everyday military business, especially in training,” a spokesperson for the ministry told Bild.
Note that, just as spirited opposition to the Anglosphere’s economic and military policies has suddenly appeared in the tractor-filled streets of Germany, the “classified document” is suddenly leaked. Change the subject, anyone? Also, the ominous warning of a war in the summer of 2025 interestingly coincides with the timetable of the next national elections in Germany. Potentially, this implies that the elections could be called off because of the war….
