German Defense Minister: The reason for the leak of the Bundeswehr negotiations on the Taurus was the “human factor”

The Defense Minister of Germany Boris Pistorius gave a press conference at which he presented the interim results of an internal investigation into the incident involving the Russian interception of talks between Bundeswehr Air Force officers.

Der Spiegel writes about it.

Pistorius said that the cause of the leak was a "human factor" — one of the officers of the Bundeswehr connected to the closed meeting from a hotel in Singapore via an unsecured line or from a phone. At that moment he was at the Singapore Airshow.

The minister added that the Russian special services most likely wiretapped this officer. There was no hacking, that is, spies did not connect to the meeting.

Pistorius said that security measures will now be significantly increased to prevent similar incidents from happening again. A disciplinary investigation is ongoing with respect to all participants in the conversation, but the minister made it clear that the personal responsibility of the "best officers" is not in the first place. He emphasized again that the publication of their conversation by Russian propagandists is "Putinʼs sneaky game" and "hybrid attack".

• On March 1, 2024, Russian propagandist Margarita Simonyan from the state channel RT published a 30-minute audio recording in which German Air Force officers discussed the possibility of Ukraine using German Taurus cruise missiles.
• The German Ministry of Defense later confirmed the interception of the conversation and announced an investigation to find out whether the published version of the conversation had been changed.
• In the conversation, German Air Force officers talk about the possibility of Ukraine using Taurus missiles if Chancellor Olaf Scholz reconsiders his refusal. The officers also discussed whether the Taurus could destroy the Crimean Bridge. They did not reveal anything secret — it was a private conversation between the officers, not the planning of military operations. They discussed possible scenarios, but Simonyan presented it as a discussion of the "bombings of the Crimean bridge" and how to make "Sholz able to say that his house was destroyed."