BERLIN, January 15. /TASS/. The German Defense Ministry can neither confirm nor deny the Bild newspaper's report about the existence of a contingency plan in case a military confrontation between NATO and Russia breaks out.
"I can in principle neither confirm nor deny [this] <...>," a ministry spokesperson told reporters at a briefing in Berlin. "Regardless of this, we are of course keeping an eye on the current challenges in the field of security policy. These include the threat from Russia," the spokesperson asserted.
"This analysis is reflected, for example, in certain exercises and planning," he noted. "We take this threat seriously," the spokesperson added.
Bild earlier published an article claiming that the German Defense Ministry considers it within the realm of possibility that a "hybrid Russian attack" on NATO's eastern flank could occur in the future. The paper refers to an alleged secret document marked ‘for official use only’.