RAMSTEIN AIR BASE, Germany – German Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius watches a video message from Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy during the Ukraine Defense Contact Group meeting at Ramstein Air Base, Germany, Jan. 20, 2023. Germany named Pistorius the country’s newest defence minister Jan. 17, 2023. (Alexandra M. Longfellow/Air Force)
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius compared Russian President Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine to Adolf Hitler’s annexation of Czechoslovak territory in 1938 and said Europe should prepare for a large-scale Russian attack.
“Putin will not stop once the war against Ukraine is over,” Pistorius said late Wednesday at the presentation of a new book about Britain’s wartime leader Winston Churchill.
“He has also said that clearly,” added Pistorius, who is a member of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s Social Democratic Party and Germany’s most popular politician. “Just as clearly as Hitler, who also always said that he would not stop.”
Pistorius made the remarks during the presentation of a new biography of Churchill, whom he lauded as a strong leader with a clear vision in difficult times.
Faced with war, people elect a leader “whom they trust and whom they follow, even though he presents the world in ugly terms,” Pistorius said.
The defense minister, seen as a possible successor to Scholz, last week called for a loosening of Germany’s borrowing restrictions to help bolster the country’s military once a special off-budget fund worth €100 billion is exhausted in 2027.
“We have to put this country back in a position where it can defend itself,” Pistorius said at the book event, a reference to years of neglect of the Bundeswehr armed forces.
“We have to decide now whether we want to prepare for a genuine threat from Putin to materialize or whether we want to make it easy for him.”
