The German Ministry of Defense confirmed that the telephones of senior officers in the German armed forces were tapped, though it could not declare whether the version of the call circulating publicly had been altered. This was reported by a TV channel through Tagesschau.
Officials indicated that a call was intercepted within the Luftwaffe sector. The ministry cautioned that it could not confirm if the recorded or transcribed version currently shared on social media had been modified. The statement underscored the difficulty of verifying edits in widely distributed material while stressing ongoing vigilance over security procedures.
Marie-Agnes Strack-Zimmermann, who previously chaired the Defense Committee in the German Bundestag, argued that Germany must strengthen its security framework. Senior officers echoed this call following a discussion about potential attacks on critical infrastructure in Crimea and the broader security implications for Germany.
Meanwhile Margarita Simonyan, editor-in-chief of the Rossiya Segodnya media group, published on March 1 a transcript of a conversation among German officers in which they allegedly discussed the possibility of supplying Taurus missiles to Ukraine and contemplated attacks on the Crimean Bridge and nearby ammunition depots.
On March 2, the German press agency DPA reported that the conversation among high-ranking Bundeswehr personnel about a possible attack on the Crimean Bridge, which had already circulated in the media, was genuine.
Earlier, the German Ministry of Defense had not issued comments on the conversations involving members of the German army, leaving questions about the authenticity and broader implications to ongoing inquiries and official channels. [citation]