During the second World War British subjects learned that “loose lips sink ships” while Nazi Germany warned its populace “feind hört mit” – the enemy is listening in.
For four days now German defence minister Boris Pistorius has been managing the fallout from the latter risk in a modern iteration. He conceded on Tuesday that Moscow was having a “field day” with its latest propaganda coup: a leaked 38-minute strategic video call between four top German military officials discussing options for providing a Taurus cruise missile system to Ukraine.
The February 19th call was set up to prepare a ministerial briefing for Pistorius; a week later chancellor Olaf Scholz ruled out any delivery of cruise missiles to Ukraine.
At a press conference on Tuesday Pistorius dismissed suggestions that the intercepted – and leaked – video conference was proof of a compromised military communication network. Instead he blamed the “very, very annoying mistake” on human error and technical sloppiness.
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One of four participants in the video call ignored military security and encryption procedures to log in using a hotel wifi connection in Singapore. The Cisco WebEx system used by the Bundeswehr, Germany’s armed forces, can encrypt calls only when all participants use its laptop client server – not calls, as in this case, made using a smartphone.
The defence minister framed the hack as part of standard, opportunistic trawls by intelligence services during such large events: in this case the Singapore Air Show.
“For Russian intelligence it was a real find,” said Pistorius, “but it has to be assumed that the access to this [video] conference was a chance hit as part of a broader, scattered approach.”
Moscow has framed the call as proof that Germany is plotting an attack on Russia. Berlin officials see domestic political concerns, in particular Russia’s presidential election this month, behind the leak and its timing.
German officials insist the call was part of a hypothetical discussion that even acknowledged that the chancellor had, to date, shown “no momentum” to give Ukraine a Taurus cruise missile system.
In comments formalising that refusal on February 26th, Scholz generated controversy when he appeared to let slip that Britain and France had troops on the ground in Ukraine to help with the operation of long-range missiles supplied by them. “What is being done in the way of target control and accompanying target control on the part of the British and the French can’t be done in Germany,” he was quoted as saying.,
After talking to his European Nato counterparts, Pistorius said on Tuesday they had expressed “no sense of annoyance towards Germany”. They were in agreement, he said, that they would not “let ourselves be divided by this Russian attack...nor let Putin set the agenda”.
The same cannot be said for Germany’s ruling coalition. The Scholz refusal to supply Kyiv with cruise missiles is popular with his centre-left Social Democratic Party but has annoyed his two coalition allies. By contrast they oppose plans by Pistorius, also of the SPD, to revive some sort of military service within this parliamentary term.
The Green Party said such a move would “alienate” younger people, while the liberal Free Democratic Party (FDP) said it favoured “an army of motivated professionals, decently paid, who want to defend our country”.
“Compulsory military service or military service in peacetime is a severe encroachment on civil liberties, career freedom and one’s own life planning, which is why we reject it,” said Alexander Müller, FDP defence policy spokesman.
For military analysts Germany’s open debates over cruise missiles and military service indicate how far the country has come on military matters just two years after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine forced it to shake off a post-1990 culture of military reserve.
Meanwhile Germany’s opposition Christian Democratic Union (CDU) said, in relation to the leaked army video call, that it “has to be assumed that Russia has more material of this kind”. Rather than be “intimidated” by Moscow, the CDU argued that Scholz should allow the Taurus system deployment to Ukraine.
“Bundeswehr soldiers are not needed to deliver the Taurus to Ukraine or to make it operational there, as Mr Scholz has claimed” said Roderick Kiesewetter, the CDU defence spokesman. Moscow was aware of this, he suggested, adding that the leak “is intended to have a deterrent effect on the chancellor, something that has already worked in the past”.
After the Russian foreign ministry warned of unspecified “dire consequences” on Monday, a leading Moscow propagandist suggested on Tuesday that Russia could target key infrastructure including the Hohenzollern Bridge across the Rhine river in Cologne.
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