Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, said Russia’s threat to NATO’s eastern flank is likely to intensify after the ceasefire in Ukraine.
“As long as Ukraine defends Europe, the danger is not that great,” Wolfgang Ischinger said in comments published in Der Spiegel on Saturday.
That means Russian President Vladimir Putin’s troops are currently trapped there and “he’s losing thousands of soldiers every week.”
Speaking ahead of next week’s 62nd Military and Security Conference in the Bavarian capital, Ischinger noted that the situation would change once a ceasefire is achieved in Ukraine: “Then Putin can continue to rearm peacefully and the threat to NATO countries on the eastern flank will intensify.”
Nonetheless, German experts stressed that the most important thing is to end the bloodshed in Ukraine as soon as possible.
“I have no more hope for the Ukrainian people. But if a future ceasefire is not accompanied by a significant reduction in the military buildup in Russia’s Western Military District, the Russian threat to us Germans will also intensify,” Issinger said.
However, this is not at all what we expected. “This is why a simple ceasefire is no reason to sit back and relax,” Issinger said.
How the war in Ukraine ends is “a question of the fate of Germany and Europe,” Issinger said, stressing that Ukraine today is defending Europe and not just its own territory.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky is also expected to attend the upcoming security meeting.
For nearly four years, Ukraine, with Western support, has been trying to repel a full-scale Russian invasion. The United States is currently trying to negotiate an end to the fighting.
