Bundeswehr, requested by NATO to send 7 more brigades for the defense of the Alliance, who are afraid of an attack by Russia. The problem: 40,000 active military

NATO will ask Germany to provide seven more brigades, which means around 40,000 soldiers, to defend the North Atlantic Alliance, based on the new objectives on the number of armaments and soldiers on which the defense ministers in the Member States are to agree next week, three sources quoted by the Agency have indicated.

NATO dramatically increases its military capacity goals because it considers Russia a much greater threat after the invasion of Ukraine, in 2022. The exact figures of these targets – either total or on each country – are difficult to verify, given that the information is highly secreted, notes Agerpres.

A high-ranking military manager who, like the other sources, spoke subject to anonymity, said the target for the total number of brigades that NATO allies will have to provide in the future will increase to 120-130.

This would mean an increase by about 50% compared to the current goal of about 80 brigades, according to the source. A government source indicated the target of 130 brigades for the entire alliance.

Neither the German Ministry of Defense, nor NATO have responded so far to the requests to provide a point of view, says Reuters.

In 2021, Germany agreed to provide 10 brigades – formations that usually include around 5,000 soldiers – for NATO by 2030. It currently owns eight brigades and constitutes the ninth in Lithuania to be ready from 2027.

The supply of another 40,000 active soldiers will be a big challenge for Berlin. The German Army (Bundeswehr) has not yet achieved the lens of 203,000 soldiers set in 2018 and currently has a deficit of about 20,000 soldiers in the regular army, according to the data of the Ministry of Defense in Berlin.

According to a Reuters article last year, NATO would need 35 to 50 additional brigades to fulfill its new defense plans against an attack on Russia, and Germany should increase its air defense capabilities four times.

In addition, the new objectives set by NATO still do not yet reflect any provision of withdrawal of American troops in Europe -said the sources -whose perspective shaken Europeans as NATO's defense plans depend on American capabilities.

Washington has said that the discussion of his plans for such discounts will begin this year. President Donald Trump's administration told Europeans that the United States can no longer focus on European security.

During the Cold War, the Federal Republic of Germany had 500,000 active soldiers and 800,000 reservists. Currently, together with Poland, she is pregnant by NATO with the provision of the thickness of the first reaction forces in the case of an attack on Russia on the eastern flank of the Alliance.

NATO members massively increased their defense budgets from the Russian invasion in Ukraine in 2022, and Trump asked them to go further, threatening that the US will not defend countries that remain in military spending.

At the future Hague Summit in June, NATO Secretary General, Mark Rutte, will seek to obtain the agreement of the leaders of the Member States to increase the current expenses from 2% of GDP to 5% – of which 3.5% for defense and 1.5% for more defined security expenses.

In a historical change, Germany recently relaxed the “debt brake” inscribed in the Constitution, so that it can increase the military expenses, and supported the 5% target proposed by Rutte.

The head of the German army, Carsten Breuer, ordered that the country's forces be fully equipped by 2029, a time horizon in which the Alliance expects Russia to have sufficiently reconstructed its military forces for a possible attack on NATO territory.

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