The Bild daily recently reported that Germany was making preparations for an armed conflict against Russia. Attributing the information to classified documents accessed from the German Defence Ministry, the German broadsheet mentioned that Russia could turn the ongoing Ukraine War into the Third World War by attacking NATO member-countries in near future. According to the Bild, the classified documents have clearly pointed towards the possible beginning of the Third World War. The report comes as the Kremlin has accused the US and the West of ignoring the need for an Independent Palestinian State within 1967 borders.

The report published in the German daily in the third week of January 2024 further mentioned that Armed Forces in Europe were preparing for an attack by Russia on NATO’s eastern flank, and it could include a cyber offensive. In such a scenario called the Alliance Defence 2024, Germany has decided to send tens of thousands of soldiers to the battlefield immediately after the beginning of the escalation.

Citing German Defence Ministry sources, Bild also reported that the Russian Forces could attack Ukrainian troops in a Spring Offensive, with the funding from the West diminishing. The classified documents described step by step, month by month, how the Russian Forces would proceed and how NATO would defend its allies. As per those documents, the clashes might escalate in September 2024, prompting Russian President Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin to launch a large-scale military exercise involving about 50,000 Russian troops in Western Russia and Belarus. The German Defence Ministry has predicted that Russia could mobilise troops and mid-range missiles to Kaliningrad, a Russian territory located in between the NATO countries of Poland and Lithuania.

Bild further claimed that Russia could use the US Presidential Election as an opportunity to spread its propaganda and fuel more violence by December 2024. As per the classified documents, it would not be possible for NATO to take adequate “measures for credible deterrence” before May 2025. In other words, Europe would have to wait five months for the US to prevent combat between the Russian and Western troops.

As expected, the Russian officials have refused to comment on the report published by Bild, accusing it of being fake. Senior spokesperson of the Kremlin Dmitry Peskov stressed: “Recently, this newspaper has regularly stooped to publishing various fake news items and canards.” Spokesperson of the Russian Foreign Ministry Maria Zakharova, too, has dismissed the report as “last year’s horoscope“!

Meanwhile, a section of defence experts is of the opinion that China, and not Russia, could trigger the Third World War by attacking Taiwan. They believe that such a move by Beijing would hurt the business interest of the US, as well as the global community, as the East Asian nation is the biggest producer of advanced chips used in complex software. Taiwan is also the world’s largest producer of the semiconductors that power phones, computers and data centres. China has been trying to take Taiwan back (by force, if necessary) for a long time in an attempt to stamp its authority on global trade and businesses. As China and Russia maintain cordial ties with the Arab World, the global geopolitical landscape shall become a complex one in case another war begins in Asia.

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Published by Koushik Das

Koushik Das (born on May 16, 1976 in Kolkata) is a career journalist. Based in the Indian capital of New Delhi, Koushik writes mainly about foreign policies and current geopolitical issues, and rarely about other topics. His own political ideas are highly influenced by Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Michel Foucault, Michael Oakeshott and others. English philosopher and political theorist Oakeshott (Dec 11, 1901-Dec 19, 1990) says that “in political activity, men sail a boundless and bottomless sea. There is neither harbour for shelter nor floor for anchorage, neither starting-place, nor appointed destination. But we have to keep afloat”. (Rationalism in Politics, 1962) As a student of Political Science, Koushik loves to share his views on issues, which have great impacts on his thought process (and also on India, South Asia and of course on the global community), with his readers through his website – Boundless Ocean of Politics. By doing so, he tries to keep himself afloat. You will find some of his articles in https://inserbia.info/today/ (https://inserbia.info/today/author/kou_das13_i/), as he has been trying to assess the global geopolitics since 2003. You can also mail him at kousdas@gmail.com View all posts by Koushik Das