Spooked by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the German military drafted a 1,000-page blueprint in 2024 to set out how to respond to another Russian attack in Eastern Europe. Senior leaders in Germany’s 16 states are among the few government officials allowed access to the classified document, known informally as an “Oplan.”
Now, Germany’s federal government, under Chancellor Friedrich Merz, is preparing to restrict that access, in order to prevent a far-right, Moscow-friendly party — which won a recent election in the small eastern state of Saxony-Anhalt — from reviewing the plan.
