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Firstly: Why does the US have a say in that?

Secondly: Separation from the US new imperialistic ambitions starts at the personal level. Use Deepl instead of Google for translations. The quality is better as well.

“Capable” in this context doesn’t just refer to training alone.

As laid out in the video, Russian recruits are getting older and older (as in: have sometimes even fought in Soviet era conflicts) and recruitment standards are dropped more and more (apparently having Schizophrenia is OK for a Russian soldier) to keep a steady influx of warm bodies. Next, Russian recruits appear to be broadly separated into two groups: The meat shields who are rushed to the front with minimal training to plug the biggest holes in the units (stark examples include only multiple days between reported recruitment and death). The second group is going through a more traditional training regiment but also shortened. This shortening also applies to officer candidates.

In short: Recruits are getting less physically capable due to the average age increasing drastically over time, and militarily less capable due to shortened or basically nonexistent training.

As for the Ukrainians: I expect the video with analysis on their casualties and recruitment to drop this week.

Russia won’t run out of troops, but they will run out of capable troops: Russian Casualties & Force Generation - Losses, Recruitment & Sustaining the war in Ukraine

He is not leading anything at the moment. His party won the most votes, but is far from having 50% + 1 seat. Merz depends on forming a coalition, and he basically alienated everyone.

Yeah, I won’t put my money on it either. However, I can see various NGOs initiating reports to federal prosecutors in the aftermath, followed by calls to lift immunity. Of course, his coalition wouldn’t allow that to happen, but doing so would cost them a huge chunk of credibility.

The thing is:

As per law, the federal police is required to enforce the warrant and Merz can do shit about it unless he successfully overturns the law. If the officers did not arrest him, they would even be liable to prosecution for obstruction of justice (Sadly, no English version of the German law article). In fact, even Merz himself could be charged himself should he try to order them to stand down, which AFAIK he doesn’t have the authority to do anyway.