SpaceWar.com reports: “German chancellor-in-waiting Friedrich Merz said Tuesday that his proposed huge spending boost for defence was needed because of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s ‘war of aggression against Europe’.

‘It is a war against Europe and not just a war against the territorial integrity of Ukraine,’ Merz told parliament ahead of a vote on plans that also include massive new funding for infrastructure.

Merz said Russia’s aggression had included cyber-attacks and espionage, arson and contract killings as well as disinformation campaigns that ‘attempt to divide and marginalise the European Union’.

Europe today faces ‘an aggressive Russia’ as well as ‘an unpredictable United States of America’, said Merz, whose conservative CDU/CSU bloc won last month’s general elections.

Merz’s plans envisage exempting defence spending from the country’s strict debt rules when it exceeds one percent of GDP and setting up a 500-billion-euro ($545-billion) fund for infrastructure investments over 12 years…”