A leak of highly-sensitive details about the war in Ukraine from the German military could just be the “tip of the iceberg”, a former head of the country’s intelligence has warned.
August Hanning, Berlin’s former intelligence chief, told the German newspaper Bild that more Nato secrets may have been compromised, after the head of the German air force, Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz, was recorded using a telephone line that was not encrypted.
The recording, released by Russian state media on Friday, apparently reveals officers discussing the use of British “people on the ground” who would be able to help Germany deploy Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine.
British military sources and other Nato allies have expressed dismay at the apparent security breach, which has triggered an investigation and was described as “very serious” by Olaf Scholz, the German chancellor.
The Kremlin sought to exploit the leak on Monday and summoned the German ambassador to the foreign ministry in Moscow.
“The recording itself suggests that the Bundeswehr is discussing substantively and specifically plans to strike Russian territory,” Dmitry Peskov, President Putin’s spokesman, claimed. The conversations “once again highlight the direct involvement of the collective West in the conflict in Ukraine”, he added.
Scholz’s spokesman denied Moscow’s accusations as “absurdly infamous Russian propaganda”. The chancellor insisted that his country will not send troops to help Ukraine use long-range missiles after senior air force officers were revealed to have discussed the practicalities in a leaked conference call.
While his government has verified the authenticity of the call, it blamed Moscow for eavesdropping and promised a swift investigation into how a conversation by top German military personnel could be intercepted and published by Russian state media channels.
Hanning told Bild that he assumed the Russians could have listened in on more than the 38-minute conversation between high-ranking German military officers.
“The leak could have been just the tip of the iceberg,” he said.
Kyiv has implored Berlin for many months to donate the German-Swedish Taurus weapons system, which is fired from combat aircraft and can strike targets more than 300 miles away.
In the recording, the head of the air force and several other senior military officers suggested that Ukraine might use Taurus to attack the Kerch bridge, Russia’s land route to the occupied Crimea region.
They also mentioned various ways of enabling the Ukrainian military to adopt the weapons without the involvement of German soldiers, claiming that British troops on the ground in Ukraine had been adapting Ukrainian warplanes, supervising the loading of missiles and helping to plan missions.
However, speaking on Monday, Scholz was adamant that Germany would not follow Britain’s apparent example.
“You can’t deliver a weapons system with a very long range and not consider how the weapons system can be monitored,” he said. “And if you want to monitor it and that’s only possible if German soldiers are involved, that’s completely out of the question.”
He added: “I’ve made this statement very clear. I’m the chancellor and so [what I say] goes.”
Russia had intercepted the talks between Gerhartz and three senior Luftwaffe officers as they used standard off-the-shelf Webex video conference software, running on an office line. Gerhartz held the 38-minute call on February 19 to discuss the potential deployment of the missiles to Ukraine amid divisions in Scholz’s coalition over the move.
Gerhartz began the call by stating that “no one knows why the federal chancellor is blocking the dispatch of the missiles — this gives rise to all sorts of outlandish rumours”.
“If it’s a question of doing mission planning, I know how the English do it — they do the whole thing in reach-back,” he said. “They have a few people on the ground; [but] they, the French, don’t do that.
“So, they QC [quality control] the Ukrainians while they’re loading the Scalp [French-made missiles], because Storm Shadow and Scalp are in a purely technical sense quite similar. And they told me, yes, dear lord, they’d be looking over the Ukrainians’ shoulders while they load the Taurus.”
The precise meaning of the term “reach-back” in this context is not clear but in American military jargon it can refer to troops on the ground asking to receive intelligence.
The revelations will help Russian intelligence in combating Ukrainian target planning and missile operations carried out on Ukraine’s territory.
Gerhartz said that Britain had fitted Ukrainian aircraft with Storm Shadows and could help with the transfer of Taurus missiles to Ukraine.
Another officer, thought to be Brigadier General Frank Graefe, said the military “must be very careful from the beginning to avoid any wording that would implicate us in the conflict” beyond the preliminary training of Ukrainian soldiers in Germany. He is said to have joined the conversation using his mobile phone from a hotel room in Singapore.
“Once they have been trained, we’ll ask the Brits if they would take over at that stage. I believe this would be the right course of action. Just imagine the uproar if the media were to find out,” he said.
Germany has about 600 Taurus missiles and has been considering sending 100 to Ukraine in two batches of 50 to ensure the missile “won’t change the course of the hostilities”.
“That’s why we don’t want to send all of them. And not all of them in one batch. We may first send 50 missiles, and then give them another 50. This is absolutely clear, but this is big politics,” said Gerhartz. “I have learnt from my French and British colleagues that the situation with the Storm Shadow and Scalp missiles is the same.”
The officers went on to discuss targets the Ukrainians might hit with the missiles, which have a 500km range, such as Russian ammunition depots and the Kerch bridge. They believed it would take 10 to 20 Taurus missiles to bypass Russian air defences and destroy the bridge. “There’s no real reason to say we can’t do it; it just depends on the political red lines,” said Gerhartz.
In one politically incendiary revelation, Gerhartz described how the military would pretend to the German public that “information exchanges” used in targeting the missiles would be handled by MBDA, the Taurus manufacturer.
The transcript of the conversation was published on Friday by Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Russia Today, a state news channel.
Lord Dannatt, the former head of the British army, told Times Radio on Monday that he could not comment on the claims made about British troops, but said that the German air force officers who were caught talking on an unencrypted call should face censure.
“I was very disappointed to read that story. I think the German air force officers who were talking on an open line, frankly, they should be censured pretty heavily,” he said. “They are suggesting that there are British people in Ukraine. It’s not for you or me to comment on that. We have provided a lot of equipment to them. We provided a lot of training. As far as I’m concerned. I think what they were talking about was whether they would or wouldn’t supply a German system akin to our Storm Shadow.
“I suspect that we do our training on Storm Shadow either in this country or in Poland or elsewhere. It’s not for you or I to confirm or deny whether there are British military in Ukraine.”
Tobias Ellwood, the former chairman of the Commons defence committee, said the Russians had leaked the call to disrupt German politics by highlighting the division between the military and Scholz.
“Why did Russia spill the beans on this? Why did they share this? I think they’re wanting to show that efforts are being made for the military to pursue this … to agitate politics in Germany, where Scholz is obviously very unpopular. They see this as a method to sow discord,” Ellwood said.
“The conversation shows a determination that they’re preparing for this to happen. But there’s an acknowledgment of the political differences that still sit above them.”
Germany is increasingly seen by Britain and other allies as unreliable after the latest security breach, which potentially compromises arms transfers to Ukraine and the use of cruise missiles by Kyiv.
“We know Germany is pretty penetrated by Russian intelligence so it just demonstrates they are neither secure nor reliable,” Ben Wallace, the former defence secretary, said.
The blunder came after Scholz angered the British last week with indiscreet comments about the deployment of Britain’s Storm Shadow missiles to Ukraine, seemingly based on the video conference call. Wallace said then that “as far as the security of Europe goes he is the wrong man, in the wrong job at the wrong time”.
