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They also discuss potential red lines for German politicians, including a desire to avoid the military being seen as directly involved. In the audio, the head of Germany's air force, Ingo Gerhartz, can be heard discussing deployment scenarios for Taurus missiles in Ukraine with three colleagues ahead of a meeting with Defence Minister Boris Pistorius. It surfaced just weeks before Russia's presidential election.
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The 38-minute recording was published by Margarita Simonyan, chief editor of Russian state-funded television channel RT, on social media on Friday, the same day Mr Navalny was laid to rest after his still-unexplained death two weeks earlier in an Arctic penal colony. Germans fear that their stocks of Taurus missiles could be depleted, he argued, and that "Russians would see the missile in operation in Ukraine and gain insights into the missile's countermeasures and stealth characteristics".
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Gustav Gressel, a senior policy fellow with the European Council on Foreign Relations, wrote in a note earlier this year that while the UK and France are already developing successors to their Storm Shadows and Scalps, Germany does not have yet have a successor to the Taurus. "German soldiers must at no point and in no place be linked to targets this system reaches," he said last week.įor military strategists, there are other concerns. Last week, he said sending the missiles would pose a risk of his country becoming directly involved in the war. But Mr Scholz has refused to send the Taurus missiles. Germany is the second-biggest supplier of military aid to Ukraine after the United States and is further stepping up support this year. What is Germany's position on sending missiles to Ukraine? Paris recently announced the delivery of 40 additional Scalp missiles. Ukraine pledged not to use the missiles to attack Russia itself.įrance followed Britain by sending its Scalp missiles, giving assurances they would not be capable of hitting Russian soil. The UK announced last spring that it was sending Storm Shadows, which have a range of more than 250km and give Ukraine capacity to strike well behind the front lines, including in Russia-occupied Crimea. Ukraine has been asking Germany for the missiles to complement the long-range Storm Shadow missiles sent by Britain and France's nearly identical Scalp cruise missiles. Here is a look at the fallout from what German media is calling the "wire-tapping affair" and the Taurus missiles at the heart of the tensions. Germany has not approved deploying the weapons despite months of pressure from Ukraine. In fact, the German officers discussed sending the Taurus missiles only in theory. "This is absurdly infamous Russian propaganda," a spokesman for Mr Scholz told reporters in Berlin. In turn, Germany vehemently rejected the allegation was an indication Berlin was preparing for war against Russia. The Kremlin went on to say the recording shows Germany's armed forces were discussing plans to launch strikes on Russian territory, and questioned whether this was government policy or whether German Chancellor Olaf Scholz had lost control of the situation. "If nothing is done, and the German people do not stop this, then there will be dire consequences first and foremost for Germany itself," Russian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Maria Zakharova said.