Moscow used mock eavesdropping to launch campaign targeting Olaf Scholz 

Russia has successfully generated a political crisis in Germany, as we predicted in January 2024.

The aim of the crisis is to make Olaf Scholz government step down, trigger a conflict in NATO, with Berlin accused of inconsistency, and disrupt Taurus missiles supply to Ukraine. Germany has apparently been a convincing leader in Europe for the past two years, being first in security and defense, and its role has grown, with less U.S. support for Ukraine amid nearing presidential elections.  

March 1. Margarita Simonyan, the editor in chief of Russia Today, affiliated with Russia’s military intelligence, said she was given a recording of a conversation between top-ranking Bundeswehr officers, on February 19, 2024, who allegedly discussed the potential targeting of the Crimean Bridge with Taurus weapon systems. During the conversation, Bundeswehr officers also mention some U.S. and British military taking part in the war in Ukraine.

Russia claims that was a conversation between Frank Gräfe, the head of the operations and exercises department of the Bundeswehr Air Force Command, Ingo Gerhartz,  the  inspector of the Air Force, and Stefan Fenske and Frohstedte (his name is not provided), who work for the Air Operations center of the Bundeswehr Space Command. 

We believe the recording was posted as German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius said he ‘intends to follow up on the issue of Taurus missiles supply to Ukraine’. Russia launched information and psychological campaign back in 2023 to disrupt German weapon supplies to Ukraine, as our analysts showed in their forecasts. The campaign has gained momentum, as the U.S. Congress currently drags out the decision to send military aid to Ukraine, which has already permitted Russia to seize Avdiivka in eastern Ukraine.

Authenticity of the recording has not been officially confirmed. We believe, however, the recording reveals how deeply Russian military intelligence agents have penetrated into the German government.  German Air Force officers used open communication platform WebEx, which is considered vulnerable to eavesdropping. Online conversations on this platform appeared to be a common practice, and one participant joined the discussion from Singapore via mobile phone. Bundeswehr holds lots of online meetings on WebEx, as encrypted communications facilities are ‘more difficult’ to use. That means, therefore, that some NATO countries fail to provide military secrecy and protect confidential information amid growing risks and confrontation between Moscow and the West.

The wiretap was presumably installed in the Singapore hotel room, or the German officer’s phone was hacked or bugged with spyware. The Russians, however, were most likely to monitor Bundeswehr conversations on WebEx for a long time, capturing voice signatures of Bundeswehr officers. That was the way for the GRU not only to get intelligence, but also to form a database for mock recordings, with voice samples processed by AI. That means the recording that went public is likely an authentic interception of conversations between Bundeswehr officers. But we cannot rule out the authentic recording was processed and altered with some software techniques.

This could be inferred from the fact that conversation recorded includes a series of Russian intelligence narratives at once, programmed by Moscow’s psyops, particularly concerning NATO military ‘on the ground’ in Ukraine.

Simonyan, who posted the recordings, is transparent about their origin and admits she got them from the military with whom she has been developing psyops for a long time.The key message of Russian ‘leak’ is to disrupt Taurus missiles supply, undermine Germany as a NATO member, and give pro-Russian forces in Berlin the opportunity to take power, triggering the Scholz government shutdown. We firmly believe that some political forces in Germany, in a matter of weeks, will issue statements on the need to dismiss Olaf Scholz and cut off aid to Ukraine. These forces will coordinate their stance with statements by Russia’s Foreign Ministry, the Kremlin and Russia’s Security Council.  Russia is highly likely to resume nuclear blackmail, in an effort to boost pressure on the Europeans to develop a disapproval of military assistance to Ukraine.