Pistorius unveils plan to lift Bundeswehr to 260,000 active troops and 200,000 reservists by 2035, naming Russia as the threat

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD) on April 28 set out a military strategy intended to make the Bundeswehr "Europe's strongest conventional army" and explicitly named Russia as a threat. The plan raises active-duty strength from 185,000 to 260,000 by 2035 and grows reservist numbers to 200,000.

The Financial Times, quoted in coverage of the announcement, called the strategy "laser-focused on the Russian threat" -- contrasting it with the United Kingdom and France, which it said retain global power-projection ambitions without the military or financial means to back them. The FT framed the Bundeswehr expansion as Berlin "taking responsibility at last" given Moscow's preparations for confrontation with NATO and ongoing "hybrid" tactics aimed at destabilising European countries. The piece acknowledged that 20th-century history makes German rearmament uncomfortable for some neighbours, but argued the greater danger lies in continued reluctance to deploy the forces Germany already has.

The Frankfurter Rundschau focused on implementation. Its commentary called the gap between ambition and reality "huge" even for voluntary military service, citing problems with barracks accommodation, warnings about overcrowding at popular postings, fiascos around the switch to digital radio, and difficulties standing up a single Bundeswehr brigade for Lithuania -- alongside multiple defence projects judged to be questionable investments. The paper argued these implementation details, not the headline numbers, will decide the reform's success.

In the pro-Kremlin Izvestia, German-affairs political scientist Maria Khorolskaya wrote that Pistorius's targets -- 260,000 active soldiers and 200,000 reservists -- are "nothing unusual". She characterised the plan less as preparation for aggression than as an attempt to "fill the gaps left by chronic cuts in defence spending" and described it as restoring operational state rather than driving remilitarisation.