As the alleged sabotage of the Nord Stream 1 and 2 gas pipelines is being pinned on Russia, a prominent German expert now warns of a hybrid attack on the East Sea, calling for the NATO to take decisive action. According to Julius Freitag von Loringhofen, a former head of the Moscow office of the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, the attacks are a sign of Russia’s preparation for a real military intervention in the East Sea region. The expert suggests that the NATO should be able to destroy Russian infrastructure in a similar manner, rather than just capturing Russian ships after the fact.
Freitag von Loringhofen envisions several scenarios in which Russia could attack the Baltic States, including the rapid capture of Estonia’s third-largest city, Narva. He wonders if Germany would then declare a general mobilization against Russia. In the case of Lithuania, the expert believes the country is better protected by the presence of a German Panzerbrigade, which has a political and, to a certain extent, military deterrent effect.
Meanwhile, the German military is preparing for a potential alliance fall on the “East flank of NATO”, which would involve massive troop maneuvers of a scale not seen since World War II. According to Captain Michael Giss, commander of the Landeskommando Baden-Württemberg, the threat is already very acute, with daily cyberattacks, espionage, and sabotage attempts attributed to Russia.
To prepare the public for the possibility of a large-scale military deployment, Giss says that the population needs to be educated about the potential consequences, including the need for food suppliers to be prepared to have truck drivers from Eastern Europe drafted into the military, which could lead to shortages in food supplies. In the event of a conflict, the military estimates that there could be 1000 wounded per day, which would need to be transported back to Germany and treated in civilian hospitals, as the military hospitals would not be sufficient.