German secret service: Putin not weakened after 15 months of war

More than a year after the beginning of the Russian invasion of Ukraine, there are no signs that Russian President Vladimir Putin has weakened, according to Germany's secret service.

There are no discernible cracks in the Putin system, the head of Germany's foreign intelligence service BND, Bruno Kahl, said on Monday at the Federal Academy for Security Policy (BAKS) in Berlin.

Russia was still in a position to "wage war over the long haul" with newly recruited soldiers, Kahl said. This also applied to armament and ammunition.

Asked when exactly the BND knew that Russia would attack Ukraine, Kahl said: "About 14 days before the start of the war, we also detected phenomena that could not be interpreted in any other way." Russia launched the full-scaled invasion on February 24, 2022.

Kahl rejected criticism that the intelligence services in the United States and Britain expected an attack much earlier than the BND, saying those intelligence services predicted the probability of war strongly based on their observations.

The BND, on the other hand, emphasized that the decision to attack would ultimately be made by Putin. The Kremlin leader had made this dependent on many things, "which did not consist of counting missiles or tanks," he said.