The German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, has promised a full investigation after a recording purportedly of confidential army talks on the Ukraine war was circulated on Russian social media, in a huge embarrassment for Berlin.
A German defence ministry spokesperson confirmed to Agence France-Presse that the ministry believed a conversation in the air force division was “intercepted”. “We are currently unable to say for certain whether changes were made to the recorded or transcribed version that is circulating on social media,” they said.
Margarita Simonyan, a Russian state TV journalist and the head of Russia Today, posted an audio file on her Telegram channel and claimed it revealed German officers “discussing how to strike the Crimea bridge”, which links Russia to the Ukrainian peninsula it seized and annexed in 2014.