Germany’s defence minister has called for a “serious national debate” about the future of the country’s military, arguing that in its current state it is not fit to tackle the array of security policy challenges facing Europe. Ednews reports referring to the Guardian

Boris Pistorius, who has frequently called for Germany to become “war ready” since becoming defence minister a year ago and has warned that Vladimir Putin could attack within eight years, said the country needed to be ready to confront the Russian president. Speaking to trainee soldiers at the German military academy in Hamburg, and making clear he was also addressing wider society, Pistorius said: “Are we seriously ready to defend this country? And who is this ‘we’? This debate has to be had.”

Pistorius said the peace and freedom that most of Europe had enjoyed for decades was “no longer an irrefutable certainty” and that Germany was being “more strongly and actively challenged than ever as an active participant in security and policy”.This week Pistorius said he was considering allowing residents without German citizenship to join the military in an effort to raise troop numbers from 181,000 to 203,000 by 2031.

Lt Gen Alexander Sollfrank, the head of Nato troops in the southern German city of Ulm, who would be responsible for coordinating the movements of European troops in the event of an attack on a Nato member, said the German military needed not only resources but also “the visible resolve to deploy them”.