Scholz promises clarification on the alleged Luftwaffe recording

bChancellor Olaf Scholz promised quick clarification after the publication of a suspected recording of discussions between German Air Force officers about support for Ukraine. On the sidelines of a visit to the Vatican, the SPD politician spoke of a “very serious matter” on Saturday. The Chancellor said that rapid clarification was also necessary with a view to possible foreign policy damage. The FAZ learned from government circles that the incident did not change the incident's stance on not supplying Taurus cruise missiles to Kiev.

The Ministry of Defense had previously announced that it would examine whether communications in the air force area had been intercepted. All necessary steps will be taken, said a spokeswoman.

On Friday, the head of the Russian state broadcaster RT (formerly Russia Today), Margarita Simonyan, published an audio recording of a conversation that was approximately 38 minutes long and may have been intercepted. In this, senior Air Force officers can be heard discussing the theoretical possibilities of Ukraine using Taurus cruise missiles.

Air Force Inspector Gerhartz is said to have taken part in the conversation

“Comrades with epaulets gave me something very interesting,” she wrote on Telegram on Friday. This refers to secret service agents, presumably those from the GRU military intelligence service, which is responsible, among other things, for the corresponding investigation. Simonjan had already worked with him on a prominent mission six years ago, when they were the two agents who, according to the British, carried out the attack on former double agent Sergei Skripal and his daughter in Salisbury, England, and killed an uninvolved English woman through negligent handling of the Novichok weapon , interviewed as pretend tourists.

It has not yet been confirmed that the recording is real. However, ZDF and the German Press Agency (dpa) reported on Saturday that they had information that the conversation actually took place and that the published recording was not fake. According to the dpa, the Webex platform was used at the meeting.

Air Force Inspector Ingo Gerhartz is said to have also taken part in the conversation; it was said to have been held in preparation for a briefing for Defense Minister Boris Pistorius (SPD). As can be heard on the audio file, the interlocutors discussed, among other things, the question of whether Taurus cruise missiles would theoretically be technically capable of destroying the bridge to Crimea built by Russia and whether Ukraine would be able to do so without the participation of the Bundeswehr location would be. In the recording you can also hear that there is no political approval for a Taurus delivery.

It is no surprise that those responsible in the Bundeswehr are comprehensively examining and discussing which German weapon systems can be used in Ukraine's defense against Russia. This also happens in the Chancellery, regardless of the political decisions about what Berlin can and wants to provide and what not.

For Chancellor Olaf Scholz (SPD), the process is serious and problematic because it can be exploited by Russian propaganda. In the sense that Scholz announced that Ukraine would not receive any Taurus cruise missiles, but the military was already checking which targets they could achieve.

According to what the FAZ has learned from federal government circles, this conclusion is still wrong. The Chancellor remains firm in his rejection. Both his party, the SPD, and the Social Democratic parliamentary group support Scholz in his rejection of the delivery of Taurus cruise missiles. Only recently both SPD chairman Lars Klingbeil and parliamentary group leader Rolf Mützenich confirmed this. Pressure to make the Taurus available to Kiev comes not only from the Union faction, but also from the ranks of the SPD's two coalition partners, the Greens and the FDP.