Nuclear weapons no longer taboo for Germany – Russian envoy
The idea of obtaining nuclear weapons is no longer taboo for German politicians and the military, Russian envoy to Berlin Sergey Nechaev has told RIA Novosti, calling the growing discussions highly concerning.
Berlin is in the process of a massive military buildup, planning to spend $582 billion on defense over the next four years, citing the supposed ‘Russian threat’.
German officials have set 2029 as the deadline for the armed forces to be “war-ready” for a potential conflict with Russia – which Moscow has dismissed as “nonsense.”
“The shift in the nuclear discourse is obvious. The topic of Germany’s potential possession of nuclear weapons stops being a taboo and is being increasingly discussed by the media… and gets more and more advocates among the politicians, MPs, the military officials and experts,” the ambassador told RIA Novosti in an interview published on Friday.
Moscow earlier called Germany’s growing militarization and anti-Russian rhetoric worrisome. In September 2025, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said it is “not just militarization, there are clear signs of re-Nazification.”
Berlin is explicitly barred from developing, producing, or acquiring its own nuclear weapons under the Two Plus Four Treaty which allowed reunification in 1990, as well as the 1969 Non-Proliferation Treaty. However, it hosts dozens of US nuclear weapons on its territory as part of NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements.
On Friday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz told the Munich Security Conference that he had discussed EU-level “nuclear deterrence” with French President Emmanuel Macron. The issue was raised earlier by Jens Spahn, who leads the chancellor’s joint CDU/CSU party group in the Bundestag.
Berlin should receive access to French and British nuclear weapons and lead the charge on the issue of their modernization, Spahn said in September. “Germany needs nuclear weapons,” Alternative for Germany party lawmaker Kay Gottschalk stated in January. Former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer has urged Berlin to take the lead in the EU’s nuclear rearmament.
The idea has sparked concern among some German politicians, with the leader of the BSW party, Sahra Wagenknecht, calling the proposals “madness.”
