Germany has drawn up plans to procure land, air, naval, space, and cyber weapons worth €377 billion, according to an internal government document reviewed by Politico. The outlays are set to be included in the 2026 federal budget, though some projects will extend into the future without fixed timelines.
According to the document, the Bundeswehr plans to launch roughly 320 new procurement projects, with contractors already selected for 178 of them. The vast majority — 160 projects — were awarded to German firms, including 53 contracts to defense giant Rheinmetall and its affiliates totaling more than €88 billion.
Planned purchases include:
- 687 Puma infantry fighting vehicles (662 combat and 25 training models)
- 561 Skyranger 30 short-range air defense systems
- 14 IRIS-T surface-to-air missile systems and nearly 700 missiles
- Tactical drones including Heron TP and Luna NG, along with uMAWS naval drones
- Satellite programs, including new geostationary communication satellites, upgraded ground control stations, and a low-orbit constellation for secure battlefield communications
- 15 F-35 fighter jets
- 400 Tomahawk Block Vb cruise missiles and three Typhon launchers
Foreign systems make up just 25 projects and under 5% of total costs. However, as Politico noted, Germany intends to source nearly all long-range weaponry from its foreign partners.
The Kremlin-linked online bot network known as “Matryoshka” responded to the news with a coordinated disinformation campaign on X (formerly Twitter) and Bluesky, spreading videos deliberately branded with the logos of major European media outlets and think tanks in an effort to mislead users. The clips accuse Germany of preparing for war with Russia in order to “avenge its defeat in World War II,” warning citizens of catastrophic consequences.
One fake video, presented as an investigation by the independent group Bellingcat, claims that Charlotte Merz, the wife of German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, “acquired a 37% stake in Rheinmetall a month before the company won a €377 billion arms procurement tender.” The story is demonstrably false: Charlotte Merz works as a judge and faces strict rules on financial holdings in order to ensure her impartiality, and the €377 billion refers to Germany’s total defense procurement plan, not a single Rheinmetall order.
This is not the first time Matryoshka has spread such fabrications. During an earlier campaign targeting France, bots circulated fake videos alleging that Jean-Loup Pennaforte — the husband of Defense Minister Catherine Vautrin — owned a controlling stake in French-German arms manufacturer KNDS. In reality, Pennaforte is a medical doctor and the head of a department at the Reims University Hospital. He has no ties to the defense sector.
Another video, disguised to look like content from the British newspaper The Telegraph, claims that the UK authorities support German revanchism and are seeking to provoke a nuclear conflict with Russia. The clip uses the image and name of German political scientist Thomas Dietz, falsely attributing to him apocalyptic predictions — including the assertion that the UK government supposedly believes the country’s island geography would protect it from the fallout of a nuclear war.
The fabricated video ends with a line falsely attributed to Dietz in which the professor suggests that the UK would be better off using its nuclear arsenal on a “real threat” — namely, illegal immigrants.
Another clip from the bot network, disguised as a report from the German tabloid Bild, claims that Germany itself is producing fake videos accusing itself of revanchism, supposedly in order to then blame their spread on Russia as part of an effort to divert public attention away from its own preparations for war.
The Insider previously reported on another Matryoshka campaign targeting Germany, which spread doctored videos about massive new military purchases. Those clips, which were designed to appear as if they were the product of major media outlets, contained obvious errors, such as claims that the Defense Ministry ordered jet engines from BMW and uniforms from Hugo Boss. Although both companies supplied Nazi Germany during World War II, they have long since left the defense industry. BMW now builds only civilian jet engines with Rolls-Royce, and Bundeswehr uniforms are sourced from multiple firms through open tenders.
The Insider has obtained links to the original posts and, with evidence from the Bot Blocker project (@antibot4navalny), confirmed that the accounts disseminating the fake content are part of the Matryoshka network. The Insider does not publish direct links to disinformation so as to avoid contributing to its further dissemination.