The Kremlin's 'propaganda coup'

https://www.flickr.com/photos/neuwieser/6864872659

Dear Reader,

The Kremlin has scored a major propaganda victory by managing to record and publish the contents of a “top secret” telephone call between commanders in the German Luftwaffe.

Since Russian propaganda channel RT published the telephone conversation last week, the German press have coined the fallout the “eavesdropping affair,” and the opposition in the Bundestag are demanding a parliamentary inquiry.

While the fact that the Kremlin was able to listen in on the confidential call is a major embarrassment, what has been less discussed internationally is what the commanders actually talked about.

During the conversation, four senior Luftwaffe commanders discussed a briefing that they were about to give to Defence Minister Boris Pistorius on what supplying the Taurus missiles to Ukraine would mean.

They talked about how Ukrainians could be trained on using the missile, whether Germany would need to supply them with satellite data to make sure the weapon can hit its intended target, and what targets the Ukrainians would have in mind.

Parties on the political fringes (Die Linke and the AfD) have claimed that the audio is proof that Germany is planning to become directly involved in the war.

According to the AfD, the wiretap shows the Luftwaffe are “directly countering the government's alleged efforts to prevent Germany's involvement in the war.”

Even inside the government, some view the intercepted conversation as proof that Germany would become a Kriegspartei by supplying Kyiv with the Taurus.

Rolf Mützenich, the SPD’s faction leader in the Bundestag, responded by saying that the delivery of the Taurus missile would put Germany in a legal “grey zone” that would require approval by the Bundestag.

While he didn’t elaborate on why this is the case, Mützenich is presumably referring to the fact that the generals discuss the likelihood that German defence contractors would need to supply satellite information to the Ukrainians to ensure that the missile can avoid Russian air defence installations.

This all comes at a time when Olaf Scholz is digging in his heels and refusing to supply the Taurus to Kyiv. Despite facing heavy pressure from his coalition partners, Scholz has insisted that Germany’s constitutional restraints mean that he can’t equip Ukraine with the weapon in the same way that the UK and France have supplied their own cruise missiles.

Scholz’ reasoning is based on the implicit assertion that the Bundeswehr would have to be involved in the operation of the Taurus at some level.

Critics have been quick to condemn the chancellor for what they see as a thin excuse for his fear of pushing Putin’s buttons.

But there is a serious point to be made here: in the wiretapped call, the generals talk at length about how hard it would be for Ukraine to use the Taurus without relying on geo-data supplied by German defence contractors.

Furthermore, several of their suggestions for the technical planning of Taurus missions in Ukraine appear to involve some form of Bundeswehr involvement.

Thus, this would appear to be a step up from supplying old-fashioned weapons systems like tanks that are still steered by soldiers on the battle field. The Bundeswehr is a parliamentary army and any foreign deployment needs parliamentary consent. Putting their involvement in the use of the Taurus to a vote in the Bundestag would certainly be a major moment in the war - at the very least, the Russians would leap on it for propaganda purposes.

But there are potential work arounds, as the officers discuss in their call.

One involves cunning. They talk in the wiretap about taking satellite data to Poland by car to swap it with the Ukrainians there. Another way would be to let the Ukrainians source their satellite data elsewhere, something the generals seem to think they are capable of doing.

All in all, the contents of the wiretap make clear that (even if Scholz is too straight laced to bend the rules a bit) Germany’s top brass seem confident that Ukraine would be able use the Taurus without direct German help - albeit at a considerable cost in terms of time and (potentially) accuracy.

That is a message that the chancellor seems reluctant to hear as he continues to fret over legal small print. 

Scholz loves to think of himself as a man with a grand view of history. In the past he has cited the way WWI started as a warning for the modern day. But the Taurus debate shows once again that he has become so schneeblind by focusing on irrelevant questions that he has lost sight of the bigger picture.

Will future generations care whether a cruise missile fired by the Ukrainians was supported in the backgrounded with German data? Or, will they ask themselves why Germany failed to give Kyiv all the weapons it needed to repel the Russian onslaught?

The Kremlin obviously don’t give a hoot about legal niceties. If Scholz thinks that some covert technical support on Taurus would convince them Berlin has crossed the Rubicon, he must live on another planet.

---

What else happened this week?

• German police are still trying to hunt down the two remaining Marxist terrorists from a terror cell that has been on the run since the 1990s. Police arrested a lady in her 60s in Berlin last week, marking the first breakthrough in the case in years. Detectives seem to have gathered enough evidence at former RAF terrorist Daniela Klette’s apartment to lead them to one of the other fugitives. On Monday, they raided a caravan that allegedly belongs to fellow ex-RAF member Burkhard Garweg. But they were too slow. Garweg had made his escape. In subsequent raids on a student digs in Berlin and a van on the autobahn near Frankfurt, the cops came out empty handed. Still, the police have found some contemporary photos of Garweg - he was previously a phantom last seen some time around the end of the Cold War. The third of the trio, Ernst-Volker Staub, is altogether more elusive. Police have released no new pictures of him - at this stage it is unclear whether they have any new information on his whereabouts.

• Talking of far-left extremism, an elusive organisation which calls itself the Vulkangruppe has taken responsibility for an attack on a pylon that has cut electricity supplies to Tesla’s car factory outside Berlin. The mysterious group have been around since 2011 and have carried out several attacks on Berlin’s electricity infrastructure, yet police appear to have almost no knowledge about who they are. In a message posted on a left-wing website this week the Vulkangruppe boasted that: “No Tesla in the world is safe from our flaming rage.” It is not entirely clear why they hate the US e-car maker so much more than, say, VW or BMW.

• The government has announced plans for a reform of Germany’s pension system. Germans in the workforce have to pay the pensions of those who have retired via monthly contributions from their salary. But, with people living ever longer, that system has come out of kilter. The federal government currently props up the pension fund with €100 billion out of its budget (that’s double annual defence spending!). This week’s plans aren’t going to do anything to cut back on that huge figure, but they will at least stop it from getting too much worse. Planned is a supplementary fund based on investments in the stock market. The state is set to dip its toe into Wall Street with €12 billion this year. The fund will start paying out in the middle of the 2030s.