March 4, 2024 (EIRNS)—There was escalation on March 4 of tension around the leaked audio recording of top German officers from Feb. 19 discussing using a barrage of German Taurus cruise missiles to destroy the Kerch Bridge. TASS reported that the German Ambassador Alexander Graf von Lambsdorff, had been “summoned” to the Russian Foreign Ministry; a German Foreign Ministry spokesman said that to the contrary, it was a preplanned meeting. Kremlin spokesman Dmitri Peskov charged Germany “is substantively and specifically discussing plans for strikes on Russian territory.”
German Defense Minister Boris Pistorius had charged on Sunday that the audio and transcript revelation was Russian disinformation, though not without confirming its authenticity. Pistorius, according to AP, claimed that the timing of the release, the same day as the funeral of Alexei Navalny, was not a coincidence. “It is part of an information war that Putin is waging. There is absolutely no doubt about that,” Pistorius said. “It is a hybrid attack aimed at disinformation. It is about division. It is about undermining our resolve.”
Chancellor Olaf Scholz, out of the country at the Vatican in Rome, called this discussion of a German-planned-and-prepared attack on Russia “a very serious affair,” and said “It will be investigated very carefully, intensively and quickly. It is also necessary to do so”—this according to the Financial Times. A senior MP from the Green Party named Konstantin von Notz called for confirming quickly “whether the eavesdropping scandal is a one-time event or a structural problem.”
