Russian Tape of Secret German Meeting Reveals Berlin’s Thinking on Sending Missiles to Ukraine

BERLIN—Germany’s air force commander gathered his top officers for a secret meeting last month to discuss the possible delivery of his country’s most powerful guided missiles to Ukraine.

The long-range weapons could be used to destroy the Kerch Bridge, which links Russia to the occupied Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, the German officers said.

What they didn’t know: Russian spies recorded their conversation, which revealed classified details about Western involvement in Ukraine. A 38-minute audio tape of the discussion was posted online late Friday by the head of Russian state-run broadcaster RT.

Senior German officials confirmed the authenticity of the recording to The Wall Street Journal and said the meeting took place on the commercial, non-encrypted platform WebEx, the online conferencing tool. One officer dialed in with his cellphone from a Singapore hotel room.

The meeting focused on how Germany might organize delivery and operation of Taurus long-range cruise missiles should they be sent to Ukraine. German leader Olaf Scholz has declined to send the Taurus despite pleas from Kyiv and pressure within his own government.

Also in the recording were officials saying that Britain, France and the U.S. keep troops in Ukraine to help operate sophisticated Western weapons systems, something those countries have denied.

The leak delivered a propaganda win for the Kremlin, sparked a furor in Germany and could strain relationships with Germany’s North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies.

It was also the latest in a string of incidents highlighting German vulnerability to Russian spying. A senior officer in Germany’s BND foreign intelligence service was recently arrested on allegations that he was spying for Moscow.

Officials familiar with the German investigation of the audiotape leak said that WebEx is widely used by the military and other sensitive departments in the German government. “This should be a wake-up call,” one senior official said.

Last week, Scholz said Taurus missiles can’t be given to Kyiv because they would require German troops to help operate them. Officers in the leaked call, however, discussed how Ukrainians could be trained to use the system on their own.

Scholz has long been under international and domestic pressure to deliver the weapon. Britain at one point offered to take over and deliver the system in order to help the chancellor maintain his policy that Germany must not directly be drawn into military operations.

The leak now makes it less likely that Germany will deliver the weapon, politicians and analysts said.

Following the leaks, Russian officials attacked Germany for discussing detailed attacks on Russian targets and threatened with retaliation should Berlin become part of the war effort.

The leak was very serious and would be investigated “very meticulously, very intensively and very quickly,” Scholz told reporters during a visit to the Vatican on Saturday.

Germany’s military intelligence service launched an investigation into the entire armed forces and related civil servants, a government spokesperson said on Saturday.

In the recording, Germany’s air force chief, Gen. Ingo Gerhartz, tasked top aides with preparing a presentation for the defense minister on how Germany could deliver the Taurus to Ukraine—and how Kyiv could use it to destroy targets including ammunition depots and the Kerch Bridge.

Ukraine operates similar Western missiles—the British Storm Shadow and France’s SCALP. Kyiv has used them to hit the bridge before but failed to do lasting damage. Experts say the more powerful and further-reaching Taurus, a German-Swedish air-launched missile, could knock down the bridge.

German officers in the recording indicated that they had analyzed in great detail how to attack that key piece of infrastructure, and said it would take 10 to 20 Taurus missiles to evade Russian air defenses and destroy the bridge.

“There is no real reason to say we can’t do this; it only depends on the political red lines,” Gen. Gerhartz is heard saying.

Germany has a stockpile of around 600 Taurus missiles, of which some 500 are believed to be operational. Gen. Gerhartz is heard saying that Germany could afford to supply 100 missiles to Ukraine, delivered in two tranches.

He added that Britain and France were putting pressure on Germany to deliver cruise missiles because they themselves had depleted their stockpiles.

On the leaked call, Gen. Gerhartz said there was no point giving more than 100 missiles to Ukraine because the weapon can’t make any significant impact on the battlefield since Ukraine is running short of troops to gain or even hold territory.

Destroying the bridge linking Russia to Crimea would be strategically and politically important but Ukraine would likely be unable to follow up with a ground offensive, he said.

“This will not change the course of the war, we must be clear about that,” Gen. Gerhartz is heard saying.

Taurus missiles fly low to evade radar and use GPS, satellite imaging as well as artificial intelligence-enabled infrared cameras to observe the terrain and navigate to a target without contact with an operator.

According to the leaked conversation, Ukraine would need six hours to launch a missile after receiving intelligence on a new target if its personnel were properly trained and had access to all needed data.

Germany’s air force has modeled the terrain around the battlefield for the weapon system and could easily help Ukrainian troops evade aerial defenses around key targets including the Kerch Bridge, officers said in the conversation.

That topographical data is described as “for German eyes only” and sharing it could breach the limits imposed by the German government on its involvement in the conflict, one officer is heard saying.

Training Ukrainian operators would take between two weeks and four months depending on the level of precision and the complexity of the task they would be facing, officers taking part in the recorded conversation said.

Gen. Gerhartz, the only NATO air chief who personally pilots jet fighters, can be heard saying that the chancellor insisted that any delivered missile should be operated without any participation of Berlin’s armed forces.

One participating general is heard saying the missiles could relatively easily be fitted onto Ukraine’s Su-24 jets, which are already equipped to deploy Storm Shadow missiles. They could also easily be fitted onto F-16s that Ukraine is expected to receive from NATO this year.

U.S. military personnel in Ukraine could aid local troops in handling the Taurus, Gen. Gerhartz is heard saying. “Many people with American accents run around in civilian clothes” in Ukraine, he is heard saying.

A spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Moscow had demanded immediate answers from Berlin.

“Our historic adversaries, the Germans, have once again turned into our archenemies,” Russia’s former Dmitry Medvedev, now vice-chair of the Russian Security Council, posted on social media.

Write to Bojan Pancevski at [email protected]

Corrections & AmplificationsWebEx is an online conferencing tool. An earlier version of this article incorrectly said WebEx was Microsoft’s tool. (Corrected on March 2)