Burc Eruygur
04 March 2024•Update: 05 March 2024
ISTANBUL
The Kremlin said on Monday that leaked military discussions between senior German military officers last week suggested that plans by Berlin to attack Russia are being “substantively and specifically” discussed.
“This (conversation) in itself suggests that within the Bundeswehr (armed forces), plans to launch strikes on the territory of the Russian Federation are being substantively and specifically discussed. This does not require any legal interpretation; everything here is more than obvious,” Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told reporters during a press briefing in Moscow.
Peskov said his country has summoned German Ambassador to Moscow Alexander Lambsdorff to demarche Berlin for a conversation with military officials, and that it hopes to obtain some results from the investigation announced by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz.
“Mr. Scholz said that a quick, complete, and effective check will be carried out in this regard. We hope that somehow, I mean even through the media, we will find out what this check has come to,” he said.
The leak of the conversation raises the question of whether the plans being discussed are part of Germany's state policy, the spokesman said, claiming that the conversation also demonstrates Western countries' direct involvement in the Russia-Ukraine situation.
On Friday, Russian media outlets shared a 38-minute recording of a conversation between German officers in which they discussed the theoretical possibility of Ukraine using German Taurus cruise missiles.
The recording also includes discussions about Ukraine's potential strike on the Kerch Bridge that connects mainland Russia to Crimea, which Moscow illegally annexed in 2014.
A day later, Scholz pledged a swift clarification of the issue, which he described as a “very serious matter,” during a meeting with German media representatives on the sidelines of his visit to the Italian capital, Rome.
