Nuclear weapons no longer taboo for Germany – Russian envoy

Germany’s growing militarization and anti-Russian rhetoric is worrisome, according to Moscow

The idea of obtaining nuclear weapons is no longer a 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 an alleged Russian threat. German officials have set 2029 as the deadline for the Bundeswehr to be “war-ready” for a potential conflict with Russia – something that 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.

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Moscow has earlier called Germany’s growing militarization and anti-Russian rhetoric worrisome. Back in September 2025, Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said it was “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 so-called Two Plus Four Treaty that allowed for its reunification in 1990, as well as the 1969 Non-Proliferation Treaty. It still hosts dozens of US nuclear bombs on its territory as part of NATO’s nuclear sharing arrangements.

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On Friday, Chancellor Friedrich Merz told the Munich Security Conference 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.

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Berlin should get access to French and British nuclear weapons and lead the charge on the issue of their modernization, Spahn stated in September. “Germany needs nuclear weapons,” the Alternative for Germany’s lawmaker Kay Gottschalk claimed in January, while former Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer called on Berlin to take the lead in the EU’s nuclear rearmament.

The idea sparked concerns among some German politicians, with the leader of the BSW party, Sahra Wagenknecht, calling such proposals “madness.”