Many Germans are in “denial” about the dangers of Russian aggression, an ally of chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz has warned, as he said that the next government must make the scale of the threat clear to the public.
Johann Wadephul, an MP who is in the running to become the next foreign minister once Merz and his Christian Democrats (CDU) have formed a government, said many people in Europe’s largest nation were “repressing” the scale of the threat posed by Vladimir Putin’s regime.
“The most acute threat to us — to our lives, to the legal system, but also to the physical lives of all people in Europe is now Russia,” Wadephul told an event at the Center for Liberal Modernity think-tank in Berlin.