At the very end, after the summit meeting of NATO member states in The Hague had already concluded and Friedrich Merz was speaking to a group of journalists, the chancellor didn’t mince words. "What does war actually mean?” Merz asked last Wednesday, before then answering his own question: Germany, he said, has already been the target of numerous attacks. Merz went down the list: destroyed underwater cable in the Baltic Sea, German military bases spied on by drones, AI-generated fake news.

Merz concluded by saying that the transition from peace to war is "fluid.” In that sense, he continued, "we are already under attack by Russia.” Even if no Russian tanks are rolling across the border into Germany, according to Merz’s view of things, the country is already in a kind of state of war.

How did the chancellor arrive at this gloomy conclusion? And what lessons is his government drawing from it?

Merz and his most important ministers had hardly been sworn into office before they met in May with representatives of the Bundesnachrichtendienst (BND), Germany’s foreign intelligence agency. The BND briefed the group on its top secret analysis, focusing on the question as to how quickly a serious confrontation with Russia might develop.

Thus far, the year 2029 has been seen as the possible turning point, as the moment when Vladimir Putin’s military will have recovered from its losses in the war against Ukraine and would be ready for a major attack on NATO territory. The was the conclusion reached by BND experts after analyzing Russian arms industry data.

Russia’s weapons industry is running at top capacity, with 1,500 battle tanks coming off the assembly line each year. Moscow has also accelerated its construction of drones, to the point that Putin no longer has to import Shahed kamikaze drones – with which Russia has been terrorizing Ukraine night after night – from Iran. Russian industry is now producing them itself, more than 2,000 of them per month, and they are capable of delivering a more powerful payload.

It was last spring when Inspector General Carsten Bauer, the German military’s top-ranking soldier, spoke of 2029 as a critical year. It was a timestamp on the Russian threat, a warning and an appeal for the country to quickly become "fit for war,” as German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius has put it.

Concerns about Europe’s Pace

Recently, however, concerns have arisen that the warnings centered around 2029 could produce the opposite of what was intended. "The year suggests that we can relax in peace for the next four years,” says a high-ranking NATO general. He is concerned that Europe’s armies will take their time in arming themselves. The BND analysts are also unhappy that 2029 has become the focal point of the military policy debate.

A large attack by the Russian military may only be possible in a few years from now – and it is impossible to say what might move Putin to launch such an attack or how likely it is. But the BND is convinced that Russia is already targeting Germany in a variety of ways, some subtle and some less so, and that the Kremlin has updated its war scenarios.

The analysts speak of small pinpricks, aimed at testing the willingness of NATO to defend itself. And testing the unity of an alliance that U.S. President Donald Trump has repeatedly called into question. The military provocations have recently increased in number. They have been far below the level that might be considered an attack, but they have been suitable to see just how determined the North Atlantic alliance really is.

In May, for example, the Estonia military wanted to inspect the Jaguar in the Baltic Sea, a tanker belonging to the Russian "shadow fleet,” which has been delivering Russian oil around the world despite Western sanctions. When the Estonian helicopter approached the vessel, a Russian fighter jet thundered over the ship. It was a demonstration of power and a successful attempt at intimidation. The Estonian military escorted the tanker until it entered Russian waters, but an inspection never took place.

Estonia did lodge a protest and accused Russia of violating its airspace. But nothing at all was heard from NATO, as if the alliance simply wanted to sweep the matter under the rug.

The Government Wants to Talk More about War

Secret service agents and military leaders are concerned that any leniency shown to Russia may have consequences. It could encourage Putin to test Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty, the article which treats an attack on any member of the NATO alliance as an attack on the alliance in its entirety. "In Moscow, there are people who no longer believe that NATO’s Article 5 is valid,” outgoing BND head Bruno Kahl recently told the news outlet Portal Table Media. In the escalation scenarios under consideration by Kahl and his team, battle tanks advancing from the East no longer play a leading role. They believe that testing the credibility of NATO may only require a handful of drones showing up in the airspace of a member state on the alliance’s eastern flank. Would the alliance interpret that as an attack on one of its members? And if so, would the others rush to help out? If they didn’t, the alliance’s deterrence capabilities would likely be a thing of the past.