The European continent is preparing for Russian President Vladimir Putin to expand his country’s war in Ukraine and attack NATO ally countries next year, leaked documents published by German newspaper BILD reveal.
According to Bild — which obtained classified military information from the German Ministry of Defense, the country’s armed forces are gearing up for a “hybrid” Russian attack in Eastern Europe.
Bild detailed how multiple potentially alarming scenarios could unfold in the months ahead.
One such scenario, dubbed “Alliance Defense 2025” would start this February, with Russia mobilizing an additional 200,000 soldiers.
Russia, motivated by Western financial support for Ukraine reducing, would then launch a massive “spring offensive” against Ukrainian armed forces.
The potential scenario reveals how Russia could start waging war in the Baltics by July using “severe cyberattacks” while stirring up discontent among Russian nationals in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
By September, those clashes, the classified documents show, could then be used by Russia as a reason to unleash “Zapad 2024,” a large-scale military ‘exercise’ that would amass some 50,000 Russian soldiers in the west of the country and Belarus.
From there, the scenario describes, Russia could move troops and mid-range missiles to Kaliningrad, an 86-square mile Russian territory wedged between Lithuania and Poland, who are both NATO members.
According to the documents, Russia could bombard the region with propaganda warning of an imminent attack by NATO forces, with the ultimate goal of conquering an area known as the Suwalki Gap, a narrow Polish-Lithuanian corridor which lies between Belarus and Kaliningrad.
By December, according to the plot — a worst-case-scenario exercise — Russia could then take advantage of the transition period following the US presidential election and use propaganda, proclaiming fictional “border conflicts” or “riots with numerous deaths” to incite violence in the Suwalki Gap area and sow unrest, BILD reports.
Following a meeting of the UN Security Council in January 2025, Russia could then falsely accuse Western allies of plotting to move against Putin’s regime, which he could then use to rally troops to Belarus and the Baltics by March 2025.
The leaked document said in this scenario, 30,000 German troops would be deployed for defense, while an estimated 70,000 Russian forces would have amassed in Belarus. By May 2025, that build-up could prompt NATO to enact “measures for credible deterrence” to prevent further Russian incursion, which translates as combat between Western troops and Russian forces.
While the plans obtained by BILD are a potential scenario prepared by generals in the German army, European allies take Russia’s threat seriously and are preparing accordingly.
German Defense Ministry officials would not address specific scenarios laid out in the document but told BILD: “I can tell you that considering different scenarios, even if they are extremely unlikely, are part of everyday military business, especially in training.”