Germany shrugs off Putin comments on US missiles

Germany's government on Monday downplayed comments from Russian President Vladimir Putin over the weekend, threatening to change Russia's military posture if the US installs more medium-range nuclear-capable cruise missiles on German soil in the coming years as planned.

"We will not allow ourselves to be intimidated by such comments," Foreign Ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer told a Berlin press conference. 

The government's deputy spokeswoman, Christiane Hoffmann, was also asked to respond.

She said "we have taken note" of the comments from Putin, but also said that the proposed changes would serve "solely" as a deterrent, and one that had been made necessary by recent Russian actions. 

"Namely, because Russia has changed the strategic balance in Europe and is threatening Europe and Germany with cruise missiles — and we have to establish a deterrent," she said. 

What had Putin said? 

Putin said at a naval parade in St. Petersburg on Sunday that if the US went ahead with plans to station additional weaponry in Europe that could in theory target Russia, then Moscow would consider "mirror measures." 

He evoked the arms race of the early 1980s, late in the Cold War, when a core Soviet grievance had been the deployment of Pershing missiles in then-West Germany. Putin alleged the US was risking a similar repeat phenomenon. 

"If the US implements such plans, we will consider ourselves free from the previously imposed unilateral moratorium on the deployment of intermediate and shorter-range strike weapons, including increasing the capability of the coastal forces of our navy," Putin said.

Here, Putin was referring to the terms of the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty of 1987 — which the US and then Russia withdrew from in 2019. 

Both sides blamed the other for violating the terms of the treaty.

But Putin also claimed that Russia had been keeping to its terms anyway since leaving the deal — an assessment the US and Germany would likely dispute — and warned that this might stop if more US weaponry was stationed in Germany.

These disputes were already taking shape prior to Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in 2022, but the tone and urgency from both sides has probably hardened since then.

What are the planned changes, and are they anything new? 

According to a joint statement from Washington and Berlin, by 2026 the US will start to station weaponry including SM-6 missiles, improved Tomahawk cruise missiles, which can be nuclear-capable, and some "developmental hypersonic weapons" in Germany.

The US and Germany argue that the move is a response to developments such as Russia stationing comparable Iksander missiles in its Kaliningrad exclave bordering Poland and Lithuania.

"What we are now planning is a response to deter these weapons from being used against Germany or other targets," Foreign Ministry spokesman Sebastian Fischer said on Monday.

There are already a series of US military bases in Germany, a legacy of the aftermath of World War II and then of the Cold War.

There are various US missiles, albeit with shorter ranges, formally positioned in the country. 

It's also an open secret — albeit one never formally acknowledged by either government — that the US still stations nuclear weapons at one of its bases in Germany, a reduction from two sites in the years and decades prior to 2005.  

The numbers that remain stationed in Germany and some other European countries are however drastically reduced when compared to the height of the Cold War.

msh/wmr (AFP, dpa, Reuters)