On Monday, the Russian Foreign Affairs Ministry summoned the German ambassador, Alexander Graf Lambsdorff, after an audio recording between German officials preparing an attack on the Crimea bridge was leaked.
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Previously, Margarita Simonyan, the chief editor of Russia Today, posted on social media a recording featuring four senior officers of the German Air Force discussing bombing the "Eastern Bridge," using Taurus cruise missiles to be supplied to the Ukrainian army.
“There has been a debate in Germany on whether to supply the missiles to Ukraine as Kyiv faces battlefield setbacks, and while military aid from the U.S. is held up in Congress. Germany is now the second-biggest supplier of military aid to Ukraine after the U.S., and is further stepping up its support this year,” Defense News recalled.
The German Defense Ministry acknowledged the authenticity of a conversation that did not take place through a secure line but via the digital platform WebEx.
“The 38-minute recording features military officers discussing in German how Taurus long-range cruise missiles could be used by Kyiv,” Defense News reported, adding that “German authorities have not questioned the authenticity of the recording.
After these statements, the spokesman for the Russian Presidency, Dmitri Peskov, once again denounced the direct involvement of Western countries in the Ukrainian conflict.
“Of course, what remains to be discovered is whether the German Armed Forces are acting on their own initiative. The question then is, how controllable are them?” he said.
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov indicated that the German authorities' lack of surprise constitutes compelling evidence of the Western link.
"The reaction of German politicians is interesting and says a lot," he said, adding that "it is surprising that Germany is not concerned about conversations on an attack on the Crimean Bridge, but about their leakage."