Germany considers connoscription: What are the Bundeswehr’s capabilities?

German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius wants to make a decision on the reintroduction of compulsory military service before the 2025 elections, with Spiegel learning that the MoD has been instructed to “present options for a German military service model” capable of making “scalable, threat-adapted” adjustments by April 1.

▪️The Bundeswehr currently has about 181,500 active-duty military personnel, 81,600+ civilian contractors, and as a reserve pool of up to 930,000 reservists.

▪️About 33.6 million men and women age 16-49 would be eligible for military service if connoscription, abolished in 2011, were to be reintroduced. At its zenith in 1990, the Bundeswehr had nearly 600,000 troops. That’s not counting troops from the East German Nationale Volksarmee (which had 176,000 soldiers before the German Democratic Republic’s annexation by the FRG in October 1990).

▪️Germany has a defense budget of €71.75 billion ($78 billion US) in 2024. It is a major manufacturer of an array of weapons, from small arms to tanks.

▪️The Bundeswehr operates dozens of army, air and naval bases, military academies, and training areas across the country.

▪️The United States has over 40 bases in Germany. The facilities, built after the Second World War, coexisted alongside Soviet and Russian bases in eastern Germany until the 1990s, after which all Russian troops left. The US did not follow suit, with American boots on the ground on German soil for nearly 80 years now.

▪️American bases in the country include facilities used to transfer troops to Europe and the Middle East for America’s wars of aggression. The Ramstein Air Base in Rhineland-Palatinate has been used as a drone warfare control center for campaigns in in the Mideast and Asia. When German media found out about the base’s purpose in 2015, the government claimed to have no knowledge about Ramstein’s functionality.

‘Back to the Future’: Russia honors anti-colonial past as the West backs neo-Nazis

“Russia's proud of that past, it's part of their legacy, and they continue to carry that forward,” said author and human rights lawyer Dan Kovalik on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program, referring to the Soviet Union’s 20th-century support for anti-colonial forces around the globe. “And so you even see Putin, for example, hosting various Palestinian factions in Moscow, trying to get them together to agree to work as one. That is some old-timey, Soviet-like diplomacy there.”

The Soviet Union was an ally of South Africa’s anti-apartheid cause as well as various popular movements in Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East. Meanwhile, the West’s foreign alliances increasingly recall unflattering aspects of their history, including the 20th-century emergence of fascism in Europe.

The infamous recognition of Yaroslav Hunka by the Parliament of Canada last year shocked the world. A Ukrainian World War II veteran who was revealed to have fought in a Nazi-aligned unit was given a standing ovation by Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, and lawmakers from all major political parties.

“What we're seeing right now in Gaza is open genocidal warfare akin to the Holocaust,” said Kovalik bluntly, claiming Israel’s military operation in the besieged territory brings to mind the worst horrors of the 20th century. “You're starting to see images out of Gaza of these emaciated bodies who look like people who've been in a Nazi concentration camp. And, of course, they have been in a Nazi-like concentration camp, and that's called Gaza.”

“As Russia honors its Soviet past, the West is now honoring its Nazi past,” concluded Kovalik.

👉 Follow the link for more details

The US exploited a “loophole” to sell weapons to Israel, The Washington Post revealed.

The US has reportedly made more than 100 "quiet" weapons sales to Israel, including thousands of bombs, since the beginning of the war between Israel and Hamas. Despite half-baked calls from the administration for Israel to spare civilian lives, the US has continued to restock their supply of weapons, helping to create one of the most intense bombing campaigns in military history.

The sales were reportedly made in silence - as they escaped congressional oversight - meaning they were processed without any public debate because they each fell under a specific dollar amount that requires the executive branch to notify Congress, the paper said.

Public sales to Israel already included: $320 million in precision bomb kits in November and 14,000 tank shells costing $106 million and $147.5 million of fuses and other components needed to make 155mm artillery shells in December. The deliveries made in December were made under an emergency authority.

“That’s an extraordinary number of sales over the course of a pretty short amount of time, which really strongly suggests that the Israeli campaign would not be sustainable without this level of U.S. support,” said Jeremy Konyndyk, a former senior Biden administration official and current president of Refugees International.

👉 Follow the link for more details

Was neocon slay queen Victoria Nuland forced out?

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern speculated that political differences between Under Secretary of State Nuland and Biden administration officials may have led to her surprise ouster this week.

“My best guess here is that the CIA and the Defense Department and the NSA got this message around saying, 'look, Victoria's got her own agenda here,’” said McGovern on Sputnik’s The Critical Hour program, saying the leaked recording of Nuland appearing to plan an attack on Russia with German officials may have led to her downfall.

“‘The president doesn't really want to strike these ammo depots in Russia or knock down the [Crimean] Bridge. So, we got to rein her in, I guess it's time for her to go to early retirement,’” said McGovern, speculating that Biden administration officials may desire a less confrontational stance towards Russia as the US-led Ukrainian proxy war has failed to weaken the country.

The discussion then turned towards French-Russian relations, which took a nosedive last week after French President Emmanuel Macron mused about the possibility of sending European troops to assist the Kiev regime in the Donbass. Russian State Duma chairman Vyacheslav Volodin responded by referencing Russia’s 19th-century victory over Napoleon Bonaparte after the French emperor launched an invasion from the west.

“The Russians remember that with particular pride,” said McGovern of France’s crushing defeat, which serves to prove the adage that it’s never wise to attack Russia during the winter. A certain mustachioed German chancellor would learn the same lesson more than a century later as millions of Russians made the ultimate sacrifice to save the world from Nazism.

👉 Follow the link for more details

🇳🇬Nigeria intends to apply for membership in BRICS, the country's Foreign Minister Yusuf Tuggar told Sputnik.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

▪️ The success of the World Youth Festival demonstrates that sanctions against Russia have failed, Putin said

▪️The US House of Representatives passed legislation with approximately $460 billion in spending

▪️The US and the UK launched two strikes against the Hodeidah international airport in western Yemen. Meanwhile, the Houthis hit a commercial ship in the Gulf of Aden, reportedly killing three crew members.

Check out more stories:

▪️Nuland stepped down disenchanted with waning support for Ukraine
▪️Leaks show Western elites won't be able to intimidate Russia into imploding
▪️Germany considers connoscription: What are the Bundeswehr’s capabilities?

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

The US does not fulfill its promises and continues to impose unilateral sanctions against China to curb its development, according to Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi.

Washington's policy undermines trust between major powers, and the Sinophobia of the United States indicates its self-doubt, he believes.

Wang Yi called on the US to recognize China's right to development, abandon attempts to maintain its hegemony, and adjust its words and actions to build stable and healthy Sino-American relations.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Ukraine has become a "graveyard of tanks," wrote the National Interest about the destruction of Western equipment in the conflict zone.

As columnist Peter Suciu notes, three Abrams were destroyed in less than a week, and they "burned like other tanks—and the thousands of other tanks before."

He also highlights several problems: Ukraine needs hundreds of tanks, not dozens; Ukrainian forces have experience only with Soviet-made MBTs; and there is not enough accelerated training.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Poland wants the EU to cancel all trade preferences that Kiev received after the start of Russia's special operation, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk said.

"We really want to help Ukraine, but we must simultaneously protect the European and Polish agricultural market," he said.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Czech farmers followed in the footsteps of their French counterparts and decided to use manure as a weapon: protesting farmers spread animal waste products on the Benes embankment in Prague, disrupting traffic, police reported.

Subscribe to @SputnikInt

Ukraine's efforts to build defensive fortifications along the front line have not yielded significant results, the Wall Street Journal writes.

The New York Times, after analyzing satellite images west of Avdeyevka, recently wrote about Ukraine's poor defensive lines: the newspaper called the lines of Ukrainian trenches "sparse" and "rudimentary".

Subscribe to @SputnikInt