Russia is rearming faster than first thought for a potential attack on Nato, Germany’s military pointman on Ukraine has warned.

On the eve of Donald Trump’s inauguration as US president, Maj Gen Christian Freuding said that Russia had already replaced missiles and tanks lost in its invasion of Ukraine.

“The Russian armed forces are not just able to compensate for their enormous personnel and material losses… they are successfully rearming,” he told Die Welt newspaper.

Vladimir Putin has reorientated the Russian economy to feed his war machine and has also bought extra supplies from Iran and North Korea which Maj Gen Freuding, who is head of the German military’s task force, said was helping Russia replenish its tanks, missiles and drones.