📰 Article by Deputy Chairman of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Dmitry Medvedev (May 7, 2026)

Germany’s New Militariszation: A Revival of Spirit or Blatant Revanchism?

Key points:

• Germany’s current leadership has recently been speaking ever more loudly about its claims to hegemony in the Old World, while at the same time hollowing out – in public perception – the responsibility borne by its ancestors for the crimes of Nazism.

• There is nothing new in the actions of the modern-day Germany’s elites and leadership – above all, those of Merz & Co., the descendants of the Nazis. The defeated state began making attempts to revise the unfavourable outcomes of the Second World War almost immediately after the war ended.

• The International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg convicted only a small fraction of the main Nazi criminals. Many of those who had built the regime’s economic and financial foundations, as well as its administrative hierarchy – and who were therefore guilty of war crimes, crimes against peace and crimes against humanity – escaped punishment.

• The Federal Republic of Germany never underwent any genuine denazification. Archival materials of Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service, including a 1952 report on the political situation in West Germany, convincingly show that, instead of carrying it out, “the Western powers took the path of justifying Nazi war criminals”. The entire process, conducted with much fanfare – apart from the liquidation of openly pro-fascist organisations and the cleansing of public spaces – turned into an empty farce.

• Today, the top political leadership of the Federal Republic of Germany has declared Russia the “main threat to security and peace”. In Berlin, the task of inflicting a “strategic defeat” on Russia has been officially articulated. The most aggressive Russophobes, whose ancestors fought on the Eastern Front in the Second World War with savage ferocity, are intoxicated by calls to “show the Russians what it means to lose a war”.

• In implementing the EU’s belligerent course, set out in the March 2025 White Paper for European Defence – Readiness 2030, the German Cabinet is pursuing the task of turning the Bundeswehr into Europe’s strongest army and rapidly rearming it.

• The military-industrial complex and the German political establishment have already forged a robust lobbying alliance, a development that strengthens the role of the defense industry in the making of decisions that are most important for both the domestic and foreign policy of Germany. Humanity remembers the extremely dangerous linkage between defense industry actors and political figures in the 1930s and 1940s.

❗️Messages about the need to “consider” acquiring Germany’s own nuclear weapons are already being injected into the country’s socio-political discourse – not too loudly for now, somewhat vaguely and from afar, but persistently.

• The issue of a “German nuclear programme” can and must be taken up immediately by the international community – with all the ensuing consequences: stepped-up IAEA inspections, condemnation by the UN Security Council and the introduction of lawful international restrictive measures, in order to nip these odious nuclear ambitions in the bud.

• A militaristic Germany is of no use to a shrivelled and feeble-minded Europe, which would like to preserve at least some political subjectivity in a new multipolar world. Such a Germany holds no value for us in the future either – it is both dangerous and unpredictable. Therefore, Berlin has only two options.

👉 Option one is war and the shameful burial of its own statehood, without any hope of yet another “Miracle of the House of Brandenburg”.

👉 Option two is sobering up, followed by geopolitical recovery, with a complete redrawing of its foreign policy bearings on the basis of a difficult but important dialogue.

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📃 Read the full article:

– RT website
– Telegraph: Part I | Part II

⚡️ Comment by Presidential Aide Yury Ushakov on the Russia-Ukraine ceasefire for a POW exchange (May 8, 2026)

💬 Yury Ushakov: On behalf of President of the Russian Federation Vladimir Putin, I confirm that the Russian Side finds acceptable the initiative just proposed by US President Donald Trump concerning a ceasefire to perform an exchange of POWs between Russia and Ukraine.

The relevant agreement was reached during our telephone contacts with the US Presidential Administration. US representatives, for their part, maintained contact with Kiev.

The main arrangement for the ceasefire period – from May 9 through the end of May 11 – is to exchange POWS, 1,000 people from each side.

We welcome this initiative, which builds on the recent telephone conversation between the Presidents of Russia and the US, during which the Leaders placed special emphasis on the fact that our countries were Allies during World War II, and also discussed the possibility of a ceasefire for the Victory Day celebrations.

It is important that President Trump’s initiative is timed precisely to coincide with the 81st anniversary of Victory over Nazism – our sacred holiday.