Germany should expand its defense. With a view to Russia, the FDP politician sees potential in the Bundeswehr reservists. But they would first have to be registered.
In view of the threat from Russia, FDP defense expert Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann is calling for the activation of 900,000 reservists in Germany. “Putin is preparing his people for war and positioning them against the West. We must therefore become capable of defending ourselves as quickly as possible,” the chairwoman of the Bundestag’s defense committee told the newspapers of the Funke media group. “Russia only produces weapons. School books are being printed that portray Germany as an aggressor. Primary school children are being trained to use weapons. All of this is frightening,” said Strack-Zimmermann.
She called for “the approximately 900,000 reservists that we have in Germany to be activated.” They would first have to be registered. The Bundeswehr has not been registering soldiers who have retired from active service for decades. “If we could recruit just half of them with their corresponding expertise as reservists, that would be an incredible asset,” she said.
The chairman of the Reservists’ Association, Patrick Sensburg, had already proposed a few weeks ago that all former members of the Bundeswehr should be systematically recorded with regard to their health status and availability in order to plan for them to be deployed in homeland security and national and alliance defense and to gradually allow them to practice again.
Sensburg: “We are running out of time”
Sensburg welcomed Strack-Zimmermann’s initiative. “That’s smart, because we’re running out of time if we want to prevent war,” the former CDU member of the Bundestag told the “Rheinische Post”. His association is working on proposals on how to support the Bundeswehr in reactivating and in checking health status by licensed doctors who are also reservists.
Reservists are all former military service members and long-term soldiers of the Bundeswehr. This does not include former soldiers of the GDR People’s Army who never served in the Bundeswehr after its end.
Source: Stern
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