One year after the Chancellor’s turning point speech: Where does the Bundeswehr stand?

Berlin When Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD) gave his famous “turning point” speech a year ago, the Ukraine war was just three days old: You need your own strength if you want to set limits on warmongers like Russian President Vladimir Putin, said the head of government at the time in the Bundestag.

And he repeated a phrase he had used a few days earlier at the Munich Security Conference: “We need planes that fly, ships that set sail, and soldiers who are optimally equipped for their missions.”

In order to make the Bundeswehr fit for national and alliance defense again, Scholz announced a special fund with a volume of 100 billion euros. And he promised that “from now on, the government will invest more than 2 percent of the gross domestic product in our defense every year”.