Boris Pistorius, Federal Minister of Defence of Germany, has said that Russia might attack a NATO country in the near future.

"We have to take into account that [Russian President] Vladimir Putin might one day attack even a NATO country. Our experts think that this might happen in the next 5-8 years," Pistorius said in an interview with Tagesspiegel, as reported by Bild.

Pistorius said that Russia keeps threatening other countries and mentioned its recent threat against the Baltic states.

Pistorius has proposed the possibility of introducing modified compulsory military service in Germany and is waiting on the defence ministry to develop different options for implementing it by the end of April. He also said he was prepared to allow German residents who do not have German citizenship to join the armed forces.

"We will be the first armed forces in Europe to do so," Pistorius said, adding that some German residents are third- or fourth-generation immigrants and yet still do not have citizenship.

The German defence minister also said that the currently available funds are no longer enough to ensure Germany’s security and spoke in support of reforming the "debt break" for the sake of national security.

"The ‘debt break’ as it is will not allow us to go through these crises unscathed. We have to quickly strengthen our defence capability in light of the current situation," he added.

It was reported earlier that NATO would hold large-scale military exercises in February involving 90,000 military personnel to rehearse a scenario of a Russian attack on the territory of a NATO member.

Bild reported that it had gained access to a secret Bundeswehr document – a training scenario that describes step by step how a military conflict between Russia and NATO could develop. The scenario describes the actions of Russia and the West month by month, culminating in the deployment of hundreds of thousands of NATO soldiers and the inevitable outbreak of war in the summer of 2025.

Jānis Sārts, Director of the NATO Strategic Communications Centre of Excellence, said that the Bild article was based on a training scenario document.