by Francis Tuschek, Staff Writer
Moscow’s ultimate goal is to divide NATO and change the existing world order, Bruno Kahl, the chief of Germany foreign intelligence service BND, has said.
Russia has surpassed European states in terms of military spending during its conflict with Ukraine, Kahl told MPs in the Bundestag on Monday. Russian President Vladimir Putin will “continue to test the West’s red lines and further escalate the confrontation,” the top spy claimed. “Direct military confrontation with NATO has become an option for Moscow,” he said.
Last month, Putin announced changes to the Russian nuclear doctrine in response to potential escalation stemming from US military aid to Ukraine, which Moscow already views as a direct participation of NATO in the conflict. The revision came as Kiev continues to pressure Western countries to greenlight the use of foreign-supplied weapons for strikes deep inside Russian territory.
Kohl claimed that the Russian leader’s ultimate aim is to “push the US out of Europe” and restore NATO to its late 1990s borders. Moscow seeks to form a “Russian sphere of influence” and establish a “new world order,” he said.
Russia has repeatedly cited the continuing expansion of NATO eastward as one of the root causes of the conflict, along with the US-led alliance’s military cooperation with Ukraine.
Putin said that Moscow favors a new “multipolar” model of international relations that would be free from Washington’s “unilateralism.”
Russia and its allies are advocating for “the formation of a fair world order based on universally recognized principles of international law with the pivotal role of the UN,” he said this month during a meeting of the leaders of the Commonwealth of Independent State (CIS), a bloc uniting several post-Soviet countries.
“A new world order is emerging that reflects the world’s diversity. This process is inevitable and irreversible,” Putin said at an international forum in Turkmenistan last Friday. He also stressed in the past that Russia would not attack a NATO member unless it was attacked first.