Germany
\nThe German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has promised a full investigation after a recording purportedly of confidential army talks on the Ukraine war was circulated on Russian social media, in a huge embarrassment for Berlin.
\nA German defence ministry spokesperson confirmed to Agence France-Presse that the ministry believed a conversation in the air force division was \u201cintercepted\u201d. \u201cWe are currently unable to say for certain whether changes were made to the recorded or transcribed version that is circulating on social media,\u201d they said.
\nMargarita Simonyan, a Russian state TV journalist and the head of Russia Today, posted an audio file on her Telegram channel and claimed it revealed German officers \u201cdiscussing how to strike the Crimea bridge\u201d, which links Russia to the Ukrainian peninsula it seized and annexed in 2014.
\nParticipants in the call also appear to discuss the possible delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Kyiv, which Scholz has publicly so far firmly rejected.
\nThey also talk about the training of Ukrainian soldiers, and possible military targets. Kyiv has long called on Germany to provide it with Taurus missiles, which can reach targets up to 500km (300 miles) away.
\nReuters listened to the 38-minute recording but could not independently confirm its authenticity.
\nScholz, speaking on a visit to Rome, called the potential leak \u201cvery serious\u201d and said it was \u201cnow being clarified very carefully, very intensively and very quickly\u201d.
\nRussia\u2019s embassy in Berlin did not respond to an emailed request for comment on Saturday about allegations of possible spying. A Russian foreign ministry spokesperson said on social media on Friday: \u201cWe demand an explanation from Germany\u201d, without detailing its particular concerns.
\nGermany\u2019s ARD broadcaster described the leak as a \u201ccatastrophe\u201d for the German secret services.
\nAccording to Der Spiegel magazine, the videoconference was held on the WebEx platform, and not on a secret internal army network.
\n\u201cIf this story turns out to be true, it would be a highly problematic event,\u201d Green party politician Konstantin von Notz told the RND broadcaster.
\nSpeaking at a diplomatic forum in Turkey on Saturday, the Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, said the recording indicated that Ukraine and its backers \u201cdo not want to change their course at all, and want to inflict a strategic defeat on Russia on the battlefield\u201d.
\nA Russian foreign ministry spokesperson, Maria Zakharova, demanded that Germany \u201cpromptly\u201d provide explanations for the discussion. \u201cAttempts to avoid answering the questions will be regarded as an admission of guilt,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Germany The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has promised a full investigation after a recording purportedly of confidential army talks on the Ukraine war was circulated on Russian social media, in a huge embarrassment for Berlin. A German defence ministry spokesperson confirmed to Agence France-Presse that the ministry believed a conversation in the air force division …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":61483,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-61475","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61475","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61475"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61475\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61484,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61475\/revisions\/61484"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/61483"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61475"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61475"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nabanews.pk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61475"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}