The head of the Federal Intelligence Service Bruno Kahl, speaking in Berlin at an event of the German Association for Foreign Policy (DGAP), warns of an escalation of the Kremlin’s hybrid warfare in the coming years.

If the hybrid threat intensifies, as everything seems to indicate, it could be driven NATO in the activation of even Article 5 of the Pact for NATO, according to Bruno Kahl. It is about the collective defense clause, which in simple words is the cornerstone of the logic of the North Atlantic Alliance.

Article 5 of the NATO Treaty

If a NATO member is attacked, that attack will be considered an attack against all allies, who are committed to help by all means, including “armed force”, as this article states, with the aim of restoring international peace and security .

Bruno Kahl pointed out that Moscow is massively upgrading its military, and possibly so that the Russian armed forces would have the personnel and material capabilities to carry out an attack on NATO by the end of this decade.

In the meantime, as reported by the SZ newspaper, the Russian sub. Defense maintains doubts about the attitude of the US, and specifically whether it would really honor the NATO obligation to rush to the defense of the collective defense if another NATO member was attacked, against the background of the inauguration of Donald Trump next January.

Bruno Kahl noted, however, that for the time being “there are no indications of her specific war intentions of Russia. But if forces with such intentions gain the upper hand at the headquarters of the government in Moscow, it will increase the risk of a military conflict in the coming years.”