The German army cannot defend the country, says the defense minister

Her defense minister Germany Boris Pistorius stated that the German army cannot respond to a war situation and that it would not be able to defend the country in the event of an armed conflict.

As reported by Bild, Mr. Pistorius, speaking to pchairing the Parliamentary Group of the Social Democratic Party (SPD), said that Germany’s armed forces are not able to defend the country or its allies against an aggressor like the Russian army, while stressing that “we have to adapt to this situation”.

According to the newspaper, even senior military officials said they had never heard such a clear statement from a defense minister, pointing out that the previous leaderships tried to hide the desperate state of the army. For example, the predecessor of Mr. Pistorius, Christine Lambrecht, even tried to hide from the Federal Parliament the reports on the readiness of the armed forces regarding the military material, while during the ministry of Ursula von der Leyen, corresponding reports were classified as secret and the MPs could only read the data in a special chamber of the Bundestag.

At the meeting of K.O. of the SPD, Mr Pistorius also said that Germany must fulfill its alliance obligations. “We have to start fulfilling them again. In the past we didn’t.” The Bundeswehr “urgently needs weapons, heavy equipment, ammunition, but also soldiers”, he said, and his stance was praised not only by his party’s MPs, but also by opposition figures. Christian Democratic Party (CDU) foreign policy chief Norbert Röttgen told Bild: “What Pistorius is saying is the bitter truth and it is courageous that the defense minister is not embellishing it, but expressing it openly. But he also describes his task in this way: To change things, and to receive the political support of his party for that.”