At a July 12 event of the nachdenkseiten journal, former German TV correspondent in Moscow and author of numerous books on German-Russian relations, Gabriele Krone-Schmalz, urged viewers to take the most recent Russian charges seriously. Russia has charged that deep strikes on targets inside Russia are carried out from the U.S. command center at the US air base in Ramstein, Germany, and therefore that Russian Oreshniks will, if this is not stopped, strike Ramstein and extinguish it along with the German civilians living in this region.
She further emphasized that the deployment strategy of the United States operates independently of the conflict in Ukraine. The decision to position long-range missiles was established during the Obama administration, while the subsequent development of a “Multidomain Task Force” headquarters in Wiesbaden-Erbenheim commenced in 2017 under the Trump presidency. This ongoing initiative is uniquely concentrated on German territory, contrasting with the Pershing deployments of the 1980s which were distributed across five European nations. Krone-Schmalz cautioned that this Task Force functions under exclusive American authority, noting the uncertainty regarding whether Berlin maintains any veto power over missile usage. Consequently, she advocated for the closure of the Ramstein air base to safeguard German national interests.
