Anti-tank barriers to be built on frontiers with Belarus and Russia as Moscow tests Nato airspace

German servicemen transporting Patriot air defence system batteries to a site in Poland earlier this year. Photo / Getty Images

Germany is to send troops to dig trenches and build anti-tank barriers on Poland’s borders with Belarus and Russia, Chancellor Friedrich Merz has announced.

He said Europe could not rely on United States support to counter Russia, as Moscow continues to breach Nato countries’ airspace with drones, aircraft and balloons.

From next April, soldiers will focus on defensive “pioneering activities” such as “establishing positions, constructing trench systems, laying barbed wire, or erecting tank barriers” as part of supporting Poland’s Eastern Shield, Germany’s Defence Ministry told Bild.

In October, 19 Russian drones were shot down over Poland, adding to fears of an attack on the Nato member country, which shares a border with the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad.

Mark Rutte, the Nato Secretary-General, warned last week that the West faces conflict with Russia on a scale not seen since the days of “our grandparents and great-grandparents”.

Germany’s Defence Ministry said of plans: “A mid-double-digit number of soldiers from the Army and the support sector will participate in Operation East Shield in the border region with Kaliningrad and Belarus”.

Operation Eastern Shield is Poland’s £2 billion ($4.6b) national defence initiative, launched in May last year to protect the country’s eastern borders.

In autumn 2024, 200 German troops were sent to Rzeszow on Poland’s borders with Ukraine to man anti-aircraft Patriot missile systems, handing over their positions to Dutch troops last week.

Poland has been the site of a number of Russian breaches of Nato airspace, with a missile killing two civilians in a border town near Ukraine in 2022. Hybrid warfare attacks have also included sabotage on the railway line.

Earlier this month, around 150 German troops and four Eurofighter jets were deployed to the Polish town of Malbork, 80km from Kaliningrad as part of Nato’s ‘air policing mission north’, with a fifth jet expected to arrive in the coming weeks.

Nils Schmid, Germany’s Defence Secretary, said on a visit to Romania last week: “Putin’s aggressive behaviour shows us that we cannot afford to let up for a second in strengthening our defence readiness … We are protecting the eastern flank from the far north to the Black Sea.”

On Sunday, Merz said Europe had to prepare for the growing threat from Russia without US support.

He said: “The decades of the Pax Americana are largely over for us in Europe and Germany. It no longer exists as we knew it.

“The Americans are now very, very aggressively pursuing their own interests. And that can only mean one thing: that we, too, must now pursue our own interests.”

Last week, US President Donald Trump published his new National Security Strategy taking aim at Europe and its leaders, and threatening the decades-old alliance.

Germany’s domestic intelligence service warned last week that the US could get even more involved in influencing European election campaigns in future.

German hard-right leaders visit US

Trump’s NSS openly praised the hard-Right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party as “patriots”, despite them being branded as extremists by German authorities.

AfD leaders were in Washington last week to meet Republican officials, in a sign of their ties growing ever closer.

Upon taking office, Merz reformed the country’s strict budget restrictions to allow unlimited borrowing for defence, with plans to spend more than €650b in the next five years.

The move will allow Germany to hit the increased Nato spending targets of 3.5%

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