Former BND President Schindler Warns Russia Will Escalate Hybrid Testing of NATO Within 3-5 Years as German Intelligence Reform Advances

Former BND president Gerhard Schindler, who led the German foreign intelligence service from 2012 to 2016, told the NZZ that Russia is testing NATO and Germany through a deliberate campaign of hybrid operations, citing severed Baltic Sea communications cables, cyber sabotage and espionage, surveillance of military sites, arson attacks on defense firms, and the attempted explosive attack at Leipzig/Halle airport 1. Schindler said this "testing phase" will continue and could escalate, pointing to scenarios such as an attack on an Estonian border post or a drone strike on a minor bridge in Latvia as tests of NATO's alliance cohesion 1. He said Putin, who turns 74 this year, operates on a three-to-five-year horizon rather than decades, within which Moscow will seek a military win in Ukraine and try to fracture Western support 1. In a separate BILD podcast interview with Paul Ronzheimer, Schindler discussed Germany's pending BND reform law, saying it would ease data-retention limits, break down data-sharing barriers between agencies, permit AI use, and authorize active measures such as disabling servers used in attacks against Germany 23.