Monday, March 04, 2024

Germany accuses Russia of seeking to divide Europe with leaked call


Updated Mon, March 4, 2024 
By Andreas Rinke and Rachel More

BERLIN (Reuters) -Germany accused Russia on Monday of leaking an intercepted recording of German military discussions about how to support Ukraine against the Kremlin's invasion in an attempt to divide Europe.

Russian media last week published an audio recording of a meeting of senior German military officials held by Webex discussing weapons for Ukraine and a potential strike by Kyiv on a bridge in Crimea.

Germany has confirmed the authenticity of the 38-minute call, saying it is investigating what it called an apparent act of eavesdropping by Russia that was part of an "information war".

Participants in the call discuss the possible delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Kyiv, which Chancellor Olaf Scholz has publicly rejected. They also discuss how France and Britain are delivering and operating their own cruise missiles with shorter ranges.

While there has been little public response so far from allies, analysts say the recording is likely to strain ties given it is another major security breach and reveals the extent of German reluctance to get too involved in the war.

"This hybrid attack aimed to generate insecurity and divide us," a government spokesman said on Monday. "And that is exactly what we will not allow. We are in constant contact with our partners."

Moscow accuses the "collective West" of using Ukraine to wage a proxy war against Russia. NATO says it is helping Ukraine to defend itself against a war of aggression.

A spokesman for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told reporters the leak was a matter for Germany to investigate and Britain would continue to work with Germany to support Ukraine.

Still, he added that Britain was the first country to provide long-range precision strike missiles to Ukraine "and we would encourage our allies to do the same".

Tobias Ellwood, a Conservative lawmaker and former chair of the parliamentary defence committee, told the BBC's Radio Four Today programme said Russia had probably not learned anything it did not already know through the leak, given its vast spy operations.

"That doesn't prevent some serious conversations taking place in the diplomatic corridors between Germany and Britain and indeed NATO, as well as to why this happened in the first place," he said.

Germany has suffered a few embarrassing security leaks of late - authorities arrested a German Foreign Intelligence Service (BND) employee they suspected of spying for Russia in late 2022.

"It is a wake-up call that we are being targeted by (Russian President) Putin," Finance Minister Christian Lindner said on Monday.

GERMAN AMBASSADOR SUMMONED?

The Kremlin said on Monday the recording showed Germany's armed forces were discussing plans to launch strikes on Russian territory, and questioned whether Scholz was in control of the situation.

"The recording itself says that within the Bundeswehr, plans to launch strikes on Russian territory are being discussed substantively and concretely," Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters.

"Here we have to find out whether the Bundeswehr is doing this on its own initiative. Then the question is: how controllable is the Bundeswehr and how much does Scholz control the situation?" Peskov said.

He said both scenarios were "very bad. Both once again emphasise the direct involvement of the countries of the collective West in the conflict around Ukraine".

The German government spokesman called accusations of war preparations "absurd" propaganda.

"The Russians were spooked by Olaf Scholz's U-turn last year on the dispatch of the Leopard 2 battle tanks," analysts at Eurointelligence wrote in a briefing note. "They now want to make sure that he sticks to his line on the Taurus missiles."

Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement it demanded an explanation from Germany's Ambassador Alexander Graf Lambsdorff about the discussion. It did not say how the ambassador responded.

It was the second time in the past week that Moscow has pounced on what it sees as evidence of Western intent to attack Russia directly.

After French President Emmanuel Macron floated the possibility that European nations could send troops to Ukraine, allies of Putin said last week that any French troops would meet death and defeat like Napoleon's soldiers who invaded Russia in 1812.

Putin said in a speech on Thursday that Western countries risked provoking a nuclear war if they sent troops to fight in Ukraine.

(Reporting by Andreas Rinke, Rachel More and Sarah Marsh in Berlin, Alistair Smout and Elizabeth Piper in London and Filipp Lebedev in Tbilisi; Writing by Mark Trevelyan and Sarah Marsh; editing by Timothy Heritage, Nick Macfie and Alex Richardson)



Germany’s Pistorius Says Russian Leak Part of Disinformation War

Verena Sepp
Sun, March 3, 2024



(Bloomberg) -- President Vladimir Putin is looking to divide Ukraine’s allies with a disinformation campaign, Germany’s defense minister said, days after Russian media published a leaked conversation about the possible deployment of German long-range missiles in Ukraine.

“It’s about division, it’s about undermining our unity, so we should react in a level-headed but not less determined way,” Boris Pistorius said after a hastily-convened special meeting of the defense committee in Berlin on Sunday.

“This is clearly about undermining our unity,” he said. “It is about using this recording to destabilize and unsettle us,” adding that “we should not fall for Putin’s line.”

In the 38-minute audio recording obtained by the media platform Russia Today, German air force chief Ingo Gerhartz and highly-ranked officers discussed a possible delivery of German Taurus missiles to Kyiv, and their potential impact.

“On Friday, immediately after it became known, I contacted the federal office for military counterintelligence (MAD) and instructed them to investigate the incident completely,” Pistorius said, adding that he is getting regular updates.

Read more: Germany Probes Military Security Leak After Russian Wiretap

Der Spiegel and the German press agency DPA reported separately that the recording has been determined to be authentic, while potentially doctored, and that the conversation had been conducted on the commercial, non-encrypted video calling platform Webex — with invitations sent to mobile phones via a Bundeswehr office landline.

Pistorius said it was no coincidence that the revelation came amid funeral services for Kremlin critic Alexey Navalny and new revelations about the Wirecard scandal.

Chancellor Olaf Scholz has clearly positioned himself against the deployment of German Taurus missiles in Ukraine, causing tensions among some NATO members.

Explainer-Why a leaked German military recording is causing outcry


Press conference about the Air Defender 23 in Berlin


By Sarah Marsh and Andreas Rinke
Mon, March 4, 2024 

BERLIN (Reuters) - Russian media last week published an 38-minute audio recording of an intercepted online call between senior German military officials about how to support Ukraine against the Kremlin's invasion.

Germany's government has confirmed the veracity of the call.

This is what the officials discussed and the reactions to the security breach:

WHAT WAS DISCUSSED DURING THE RECORDED CALL?

In the call, German Air Force Chief Ingo Gerhartz discusses with three high-ranking Luftwaffe officials the possible delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Kyiv, which Chancellor Olaf Scholz has publicly so far firmly rejected.

They also talk about the training of Ukrainian soldiers, and possible military targets for the missiles including the bridge linking the Russian mainland to Crimea and Russian ammunition depots.

The discussions included details of allies' operations, such as the fact British personnel were deployed in Ukraine and how Britain's Storm Shadow and France's Scalp missiles were deployed in the country.

One official talks about the fact Britain is already handling for France the satellite data needed for Ukraine to program the missiles.

He suggests it could do the same for Germany - preventing the country from being in any way directly involved in their deployment, which is a political red line for Berlin.

WHY IS THIS A SCANDAL?

Critics have denounced the fact military secrets were discussed via a standard off-the-shelf platform like WebEx, saying this demonstrates a systematic underestimation in Germany of security threats. One call participant joined from his hotel room in Singapore, government officials confirmed.

Germany's allies have not publicly criticized the leak. A spokesman for British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak told reporters it was a matter for Germany to investigate and Britain would continue to work together with Germany to support Ukraine.

But former British Defence Secretary Ben Wallace was quoted as saying by The Times that the incident demonstrated Germany was "neither secure nor reliable".

The recording also underscores the extent to which the decision on deploying Taurus missiles is a political one - and Scholz is reticent about Germany getting too directly involved in the Ukraine war or prompting an escalation of hostilities.

The Taurus missiles can reach twice as far as the Storm Shadow and Scalp missiles, and would thus enable Ukraine to even reach as far as Moscow.

HOW DID GERMANY REACT?

Germany has said the leak was a Russian "hybrid disinformation attack" that aimed to sow discord within the country and with allies. It has also called accusations of war preparations "absurd" propaganda.

German authorities say they are investigating the incident but it is unclear so far whether any security protocols were breached and no one has been fired yet.

MOSCOW'S TAKE

The Kremlin says the recording shows Germany's armed forces were discussing plans to launch strikes on Russian territory, and questioned whether this was government policy or Chancellor Scholz lost control of the situation.

Russia's foreign ministry said in a statement that it demanded on Monday an explanation from the German ambassador to Moscow Alexander Graf Lambsdorff about the discussion which "clearly demonstrates the involvement of the 'collective West', including Berlin, in the conflict around Ukraine".

RUSSIAN SPYING IN GERMANY

Germany, one of the largest providers of military hardware to Ukraine, is a major target of Russian spying operations, which have grown in scale since Russia's 2022 invasion of Ukraine, authorities have warned.

The authorities arrested a German Foreign Intelligence Service (BND) employee they suspected of spying for Russia in late 2022.

Last year, authorities arrested an officer of the military procurement agency on suspicion of passing secret information to Russian intelligence.

(Reporting by Sarah Marsh and Andreas Rinke; Editing by Tomasz Janowski)



No comments:

Post a Comment