Armed Germany, Russian Intelligence, US Decline: Europe's Shield of Peace Increasingly Fractured
REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — Three voices from three different perspectives. One from Moscow, one from Warsaw, one from London. All three are speaking about the same thing: Europe is changing at an alarming speed, and no one really knows where these changes will end.
The first is Dmitry Medvedev, Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council, former president, and one of the Kremlin’s loudest voices at present. Next is the official report from Poland’s Internal Security Agency (ABW), published this week by Claudia Ciobanu in the Associated Press. Finally, there is Hugo Dixon, a Reuters analyst writing about the geopolitical consequences if the United States truly loosens its grip on NATO.
The three do not agree on many things. But they agree on one thing: Europe is walking on shaking ground.
Medvedev: Germany Is Building a Road to War
Dmitry Medvedev wrote at length in Russia Today on 7 May 2026. His article is harsh, full of accusations, and does not hide Moscow’s deep suspicion of Berlin’s current political direction.
Medvedev begins by noting that Donald Trump’s threat to withdraw the United States from NATO, expressed on 27 March 2026 at an investment forum in Miami, has accelerated what he calls “the greatest rift between Europe and America in a hundred years.” For Medvedev, it is this gap that Germany is now exploiting to expand its influence in Europe.
“The current political direction could lead to an almost nightmarish scenario,” writes Medvedev. “It shows an effort to realise the darkest revanchist sentiments of the German elite.”
Medvedev states that Germany under Chancellor Friedrich Merz is undergoing a massive militarisation that, in his view, is not merely a response to the Russian threat, but part of deeper geopolitical ambitions.
He notes several figures that are indeed hard to dispute: Germany’s military spending in 2024 reached 88.5 billion US dollars, up 28 percent from the previous year, making Germany the country with the largest defence budget in Europe. In the 2026 budget, Germany plans to allocate more than 108 billion euros for defence purposes.
Medvedev also highlights Germany’s plans to increase the strength of the Bundeswehr from 181,000 to 460,000 active and reserve personnel, as well as the deployment of the 45th Armoured Brigade of the Bundeswehr in Lithuania, which he calls “the first deployment of regular German troops outside German territory since World War II.”