A second participant in a confidential conversation between high-ranking German army officers had not properly connected to the video conference, German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said on Monday. During this meeting on military aid to Kiev, the audio recording of which was published in Russia, Air Force inspector Ingo Gerhartz did not use the required connection, according to the first results of the investigations announced following a meeting of the Bundestag Defense Committee.
However, there would have been no data leak in his case, unlike another participant whose use of an “unauthorized connection” was already known. In an attempt to calm things down after this scandal of Russian wiretapping of the German army which broke out at the beginning of March, Germany pointed out an “individual error”.
Not wanting to “play Putin’s game”
The minister indicated that preliminary disciplinary investigations were underway to find out what “could or could not have been discussed” during the interview and what technical errors were made. He indicated that he wanted to wait for the results of these investigations before deciding whether there will be “a disciplinary procedure and, if so, of what nature”, while recalling that he did not want to “play Putin’s game” by “putting my best officers at the door, whether they made a mistake or not.”
Boris Pistorius announced that security awareness within the Bundeswehr would be increased again and that the protection systems used would possibly be toughened. During this intercepted conversation, the officers notably discussed the hypothesis of the delivery to kyiv of German-made long-range Taurus missiles. And this even though Chancellor Olaf Scholz, pressed from all sides to equip kyiv, categorically rejected the idea of delivering these powerful precision weapons with a range of 500 km, for fear of an escalation of the conflict on the territory Russian.
While the debate on the delivery of Taurus to Ukraine has continued for months, Minister Pistorius commented on the hypothesis of a delivery of these missiles to the United Kingdom, which could in turn deliver weapons similar to the Ukraine, a hypothesis raised in recent days. The German government does not believe it would make “a significant difference”, Mr Pistorius said on Monday evening.