A joint statement by the U.S. and Germany on July 10, during the Washington NATO summit, announced that the two countries “will begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force in Germany in 2026 as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future.” In addition, the statement said the long-range fires units would be equipped with SM-6, Tomahawk and advanced hypersonic weapons with significantly greater range than current systems in Europe.
In an interview with Silovoy Blok, Russian Honored Military Pilot Major General Vladimir Popov, a Candidate of Technical Sciences, said: “The response must be proportionate and mirrored.… We can think about bringing in not only Iskanders, but something even more powerful. Before this, we deployed operational-tactical missile systems in Belarus and Kaliningrad. Now, if the U.S. really goes all the way and deploys its missiles in Germany, we could increase the existing group, and by at least 2-3 times,” he said.
“We need to see how the special operation will end, a lot will depend on it, including the behavior of Germany, where they are going to deploy American missiles. It is clear that the situation will escalate, especially in Europe. We will obviously try to keep up and will respond to the deployment of missiles. Russia still has excellent aviation. And our MiG-31s with `Kinzhals’ have already been in Belarus, they flew there. Strengthening the group will allow us to mitigate the threat from Germany to a certain extent,” Popov said.
Agreements for such a deployment would, of course, have to be made with Belarus President Aleksandr Lukashenko.
