Lisa Haseldine

Hamburg What would happen if Russia was planning an attack on Estonia, Lithuania or Latvia – and the threat was sufficiently great that Nato felt the need to send troops east across Europe to face off against Moscow? This was the scenario the German Bundeswehr spent several days rehearsing last month, working out how the army would transport its soldiers towards Nato’s eastern flank in the event of conflict in the Baltics. For three days, the port city of Hamburg played host to the exercise Red Storm Bravo: 500 soldiers, along with roughly 300 members of the emergency services and other civilian organisations, took part – the largest military exercise in the city since the end of the Cold War.

The Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party continued its westward march in popularity across Germany yesterday, securing third place in the local elections in the western state of North Rhine-Westphalia. Preliminary results show that, alongside the outcomes of mayoralty and district administrator elections which took place in the state, the far-right party won 14.5 per cent of the vote across the 396 municipalities which went to the polls. The liberal SPD party came in second with 22.1 per cent, while the CDU – the governing party in Berlin – secured a third of the vote, with 33.3 per cent. The German Chancellor, Friedrich Merz, will be breathing a small sigh of relief at the results this morning.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky arrived in Berlin this morning, where at 3pm local time he will speak to Donald Trump and his vice president J.D. Vance over video alongside other European leaders to discuss an end to the war in Ukraine. The German Chancellor Friedrich Merz brokered the meeting following the news that the American president would be meeting Vladimir Putin in Alaska this coming Friday to discuss a peace deal – without Zelensky present. Ahead of Zelensky’s summit with Trump and Vance, the Ukrainian president and Merz will first convene a virtual meeting with his strongest European allies.

Germany’s new chancellor Friedrich Merz seems serious about his pledge to make the Bundeswehr the ‘strongest conventional army in Europe’. Yet less than a month into his chancellorship, a daunting realisation is dawning on Berlin: without resorting to conscription, there is little prospect of growing the German army or fulfilling Merz’s ambitious promise.  Merz’s defence minister Boris Pistorius – the only SPD politician from Olaf Scholz’s administration to remain in the cabinet – is in Brussels today to commit Germany to raising defence spending to 5 per cent of GDP by 2032. This spending would be split, with 3.5 per cent dedicated to core military spending, and the remaining 1.

Following years of requests, pleas and false starts, Ukraine has, it appears, definitively been given permission to fire missiles deep into Russian territory. Since the start of Moscow’s invasion in 2022, Kyiv had been banned from attacking military targets on Russian soil with western-made weapons. Now, after three years of war, it appears Ukraine’s allies have indeed decided to allow it to retaliate as it sees fit. The news of the change of tack by Ukraine’s allies came yesterday from Friedrich Merz, Germany’s new chancellor. Speaking at an event in Berlin, the Chancellor revealed that ‘there are no longer any range restrictions on weapons delivered to Ukraine. Neither by the British, nor by the French, nor by us.

Just when he thought he was home and dry, Friedrich Merz has fallen at the final hurdle to become Germany’s next chancellor. At a vote in the Bundestag this morning that many thought would be a formality, the CDU leader fell short of the votes needed to confirm him as the country’s new leader by six ballots, plunging Berlin into fresh political crisis. Never before in Germany’s post-war history has a chancellor-in-waiting failed to get through the first round of Bundestag voting to elect a new leader. While 310 MPs voted in favour of Merz becoming chancellor, 307 voted against him. Damningly, this means that of the 328 MPs who form the ‘grand coalition’ Merz has cobbled together with the liberal SPD party, not all will have voted to make him chancellor.

The far-right Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) party has been classified as ‘confirmed right-wing extremist’ by Germany’s domestic intelligence service. Until now, the party – which came second in federal elections in February – had been considered ‘suspected right-wing extremist’. After this upgrade, in the eyes of the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (known by its German acronym BfV), the AfD and the values it holds stand in violation of Germany’s constitution. The BfV had been investigating the party for many months, finally submitting a lengthy report to the Ministry of the Interior this week.