Most Germans afraid of a Russian attack
Four out of ten Germans have already started to build up emergency reserves for fear that Russia could attack Germany.
Against the backdrop of the ongoing pro-war rhetoric, warnings of an escalation of the Ukraine war and the potential of a war between Europe and Russia, 46 percent of Germans are worried that Moscow could launch an attack on their country, a recent survey shows.
The poll, conducted by INSA for the German BILD newspaper, gathered opinions from 1001 people on this issue. 44 percent of respondents stated that they were not currently concerned about the possibility of Russia attacking Germany.
According to the survey, supporters of left-wing parties are the most alarmed, with 55 percent, closely followed by supporters of the Christian Democratic Union (CDU). Interestingly, supporters of populist parties on the left and right – Sahra Wagenknecht’s newly formed anti-immigration left-wing party and the right-wing conservative Alternative for Germany (AfD) -were the least likely to believe in the likelihood of a Russian attack.
The poll also revealed that
four out of ten Germans (39 percent) have already begun stockpiling emergency supplies in case a war breaks out.
Alarmingly, only one in six respondents stated that they knew where to go in the event of an emergency. The paper noted that this lack of knowledge is likely due to the fact that none of Germany’s 600 air-raid shelters are currently operational, as the government ceased the maintenance of war bunkers in 2007.
It comes as no surprise that fears of a potential attack are growing among Germans, as several senior officials have emphasized in recent weeks that people should be prepared for any eventuality.
„It’s not so much that we are preparing for war, but that we are expecting it,” Boris Pistorius said, recently.
„If we must brace ourselves for a threat that we don’t know when and how it will happen, we’d better arm ourselves,”
– Germany’s defence minister stated in a television interview.
However, a German military document leaked this month also warns of the possibility that Moscow could use the transition following the upcoming US presidential election to seize the Suwalki Corridor. This is strategically important, sparsely populated area on the border between Lithuania and Poland that separates Belarus from the Russian enclave of Kaliningrad.
As V4NA highlighted earlier, voices warning of the increased risk of a Russian attack have also grown louder in other countries.
Jacek Siewiera, the head of Poland’s National Security Bureau (BBN), warned as recently as early December last year that NATO’s eastern countries should prepare for a possible confrontation with Russia in the next three years, as the threat is much greater than previously estimated.
And more recently, Sweden’s civil defence minister Carl-Oskar Bohlin called on his countrymen at a conference to prepare themselves mentally for war. „Many have said it before me, but let me put it on the record: there could be war in Sweden,” he said.
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