Boris Pistorius made the statement in an interview with German state broadcaster ARD on Sunday, Polish state news agency PAP reported.
The German defence minister said exercises were being “considered,” without confirming or adding any details “for now,” Britain’s The Guardian newspaper reported.
Pistorius added that military manoeuvres in a country bordering Ukraine, which has been battling a Russian invasion for a year, would send “a very clear” signal to NATO allies “but also to Putin.”
Partisans destroy Russian plane at Belarus airfield?
Belarus’ exiled opposition has said that partisans destroyed a Russian aircraft at an airfield near the Belarusian capital Minsk on Sunday, according to The Guardian.
Two explosions were heard at an airstrip in Machulishchy near Minsk on Sunday morning, the country’s independent news outlets said, adding that a Russian A-50 early warning plane may have been destroyed, the PAP news agency reported.
“Partisans … confirmed a successful special operation to blow up a rare Russian plane at the airfield in Machulishchy near Minsk,” tweeted Franak Viacorka, an adviser to Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya.
He added: “This is the most successful diversion since the beginning of 2022.”
Viacorka also tweeted the operation had been carried out by two Belarusians using drones, adding that they had already left Belarus and were safe.
China weighing supply of lethal equipment to support Russia in Ukraine: CIA chief
The United States is “confident” that China is considering sending lethal equipment to support Russia's invasion of Ukraine, CIA Director William Burns has said.
Appearing on CBS’ Face the Nation programme on Sunday, the CIA chief stated he was “confident that the Chinese leadership is considering the provision of lethal equipment.”
However, Burns added that “we also don’t see that a final decision has been made yet, and we don’t see evidence of actual shipments of lethal equipment”.
Behind closed doors, the United States has made clear that such a move would entail “serious consequences” for China, The Guardian reported.
The White House national security adviser, Jake Sullivan, told CNN’s State of the Nation programme on Sunday: “Beijing will have to make its own decisions about how it proceeds, whether it provides military assistance. But, if it goes down that road, it will come at real costs to China.”
Putin accuses West of seeking to ‘dismember’ Russia
Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that the West wants to “dismember” his country and turn it into a series of “weak mini-states,” The Guardian reported.
Speaking in an interview with state TV broadcaster Rossiya 1 on Sunday, Putin stated that the United States and its NATO allies sought “to inflict a strategic defeat on us,” in order “to make our people suffer.”
The Russian president also claimed that as NATO was seeking the defeat of Russia, his country had no choice but to take into account the Western alliance’s nuclear capabilities.
Putin told Rossiya 1: “In today’s conditions, when all the leading NATO countries have declared their main goal as inflicting a strategic defeat on us, so that our people suffer as they say, how can we ignore their nuclear capabilities in these conditions?”
He said: “They tried to reshape the world exclusively on their terms; we had no choice but to react,” adding that the West was complicit in Ukraine’s “crimes,” according to The Guardian.
Monday is day 369 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.
(pm/gs)
Source: PAP, The Guardian, CBS News, CNN