Le Parisien: How did Russia manage to record a meeting between German officers?
The French Le Parisien newspaper said that Russia’s broadcast of secret conversations between several German officers regarding possible arms shipments to Ukraine plunged Germany into a lot of embarrassment, and left the impression that the circumstances in which the discussion took place reveal some negligence on the part of the German army.
The French newspaper explained in a report that the recordings – which were published by the Russian channel “RT” after circulating on social networks from a meeting held on February 19 of last year – in which officers are heard discussing the possibility of delivering long-range Taurus missiles to Ukraine, which is what it requested by Kiev, but Germany has rejected it so far.
The German Ministry of Defense confirmed the authenticity of these recordings, and Chancellor Olaf Scholz described them as extremely dangerous, and stressed that they will now be subject to a careful, comprehensive, and very rapid investigation.
The meeting was held – according to the Wall Street Journal – on WebX – an American consumer video conferencing platform – and not on a secure internal network.
A cybersecurity expert – who requested to remain anonymous – told Le Parisien that “encryption wasn’t activated beforehand, so the meeting may have been a victim of intrusion,” and stressed that this hypothesis is “the most likely” for him, even if “some other stages of communication aren’t Completely safe”.
The Wall Street Journal revealed that one of the participants called the meeting on his mobile phone from a hotel room in Singapore, and the expert believes that his phone could be infected with a Pegasus-type program, and the interception could also have occurred via the hotel’s Wi-Fi network.
Whatever the reason, the leak in any case reveals negligence; Alain Roder, a former senior officer in the French services, says, “Recording in this way is closer to the work of amateurs, and it’s strange that it comes from military personnel who are supposed to be aware of the possibility of espionage”.
If the circumstances of publishing the meeting indicate that the leaks were intentional, then – according to what researcher and former NATO expert Edward Hunter Christie confirmed – they confirmed the arguments used by the German Chancellor to refuse to supply Ukraine with Taurus missiles, which are escalation of the conflict.
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius commented on the timing of the leak and Russia’s broadcast of it, saying, “It’s about undermining our unity and sowing political division internally,” adding, “I sincerely hope that Russian President Vladimir Putin won’t succeed, and that we will remain united”.
