Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned about the rise of a “Fourth Reich” in comments to the press on the sidelines of the UNGA in late September. This was prefaced by him referencing German Chancellor Friedrich Merz’s repeated remarks about ensuring that Germany “once again becomes the leading military power in Europe” alongside mentioning historical revisionist trends and the demolition of Red Army monuments. His words represent Russia’s evolving threat perception of Germany.
This process was a long time in the making but finally began to publicly manifest itself with former President and incumbent Deputy Chair of the Security Council Dmitry Medvedev’s detailed article around Victory Day warning about the 1941-like threat posed by Germany’s rapid remilitarization. It was then assessed here that Germany might replace the US as Russia’s top perceived adversary. Germany’s reportedly planned borrowing of €800 billion for remilitarization purposes arguably reinforces this trend.
The grand strategic goal that it’s pursuing has been described as the restoration of “Fortress Europe”, which in the contemporary context refers to a German-dominated militarized EU of the sort of that European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen outlined in her latest state of the union address. On the political front, Germany’s dominant influence over EU institutions has been weaponized to erode member states’ sovereignty to Berlin’s benefit, thus facilitating the aforesaid grand strategic goal.
Interestingly, Germany’s abovementioned efforts to build a “Fourth Reich” in all but name were first warned about by the Polish conservative opposition’s grey cardinal, Jarosław Kaczyński. He used this terminology in December 2021 back when he was Deputy Prime Minister. Relatively more recently, he warned in October 2025 that Germany is building a “hegemonic superstate” while describing post-World War II developments as “a great victory for Germany and the creation of a kind of new empire.”
Nearly four years to the day of Kaczyński’s first warning about the “Fourth Reich”, allied President Karol “Nawrocki Strongly Alluded To The Significant Non-Military Threat That Germany Poses To Poland”, namely the way in which its weaponization of the EU risks the erasure of Polish identity and sovereignty. These overall views are a longstanding tenet of Polish conservative-nationalist discourse so it’s interesting to see none other than the Russian Foreign Minister himself broadly referencing them.
If this trend remains on track, then Russia might come to prefer a Polish-led Intermarium along the western flank of the “cordon sanitaire” instead of a German-dominated militarized EU, to which end it might encourage this outcome in talks with the US over the new European security architecture. Readers can learn more about the possible sequencing here and here, which involves the interplay between the new Belarusian-Polish “snowdrop diplomacy”, energy diplomacy with the US, and NATO 3.0.
Regardless of whatever might take shape along NATO’s Eastern Flank, the salience of Lavrov’s warning about Germany’s “Fourth Reich” is that he independently arrived at the same conclusion as Kaczyński, thus representing some relative common ground between them. This observation shouldn’t be misinterpreted as implying that they’ll team up against Germany, just that Russian policymakers should at least take note in order to improve their understanding of Poland, which is lacking among some.
