Germany blames individual error for Russia’s intercept of military call

Stay informed with free updates

Simply sign up to the War in Ukraine myFT Digest — delivered directly to your inbox.

German defence minister Boris Pistorius said an investigation into Russia’s intercept of a high-level military call on Ukraine had revealed that one of the participants had joined via a non-secure line.

Pistorius ruled out the possibility that a Russian spy had taken part in the conversation. “Our communication systems were not compromised,” he said.

“The reason the air force call could nonetheless be recorded was because of a mistake an individual made with the application,” he added.

Russia’s intercept and publication of the conversation has caused outrage in Berlin and triggered a debate about the safety of sensitive government communications.

A recording and transcript of the talk were posted online last Friday by Margarita Simonyan, head of Russian state broadcaster RT. In it, the head of the Luftwaffe, Ingo Gerhartz, and three high-ranking air force officers are heard discussing various scenarios for deploying German Taurus cruise missiles in Ukraine.

The four speak about the targets Ukrainian forces could hit with the missiles, including the bridge linking the Russian mainland to Crimea.

Germany’s Chancellor Olaf Scholz has so far refused to supply Tauruses to Ukraine, arguing that German soldiers would have to be sent there to programme them — a deployment that would risk dragging the country into the war.

German officials said the leak, and Moscow’s subsequent accusations that Germany was devising “cunning plans” to launch strikes on Russian territory, constituted a brazen attempt by the Kremlin to divide Ukraine’s allies.

Pistorius said the four participants had connected via the teleconferencing platform Webex, using a version of the software certified for use by the Bundeswehr, the German armed forces.

But a preliminary investigation of the intercept had revealed that one of them, who was in Singapore at the time, failed to comply with the relevant security protocols, dialling in on a “non-secure dataline” — implying a WiFi or mobile phone connection.

Singapore had been hosting a major air show at the time, which had attracted high-ranking military officers from European states. “Obviously such an event, against this backdrop, was a windfall for the Russian intelligence services,” Pistorius said.

He said phones had been tapped extensively in all the hotels where air show attendees were staying. The intercept of the Webex talk was a “chance hit, in the framework of a large-scale, scattergun operation”.

Pistorius said disciplinary procedures had been initiated against all four participants in the eavesdropped conversation. But firing them over the incident was “not on the agenda right now”.

Unless worse details emerged, “I won’t sacrifice any of my best officers to [Russian President Vladimir] Putin’s games”, he said.