Singapore sting: How Russia listened in on German general

War in Ukraine


It is thought that Brigadier General Frank Gräfe dialled into the call with other German Air Force officials from an insecure connection

By Jessica Parker
BBC Berlin correspondent


It's nearly midnight in Singapore.

A senior officer of the Luftwaffe, the German Air Force, is in his hotel room.

He's in the region to rub shoulders with defence industry players at Asia's largest air show.

He's has had a long day - but he can't go to bed just yet.

Brigadier General Frank Gräfe has a work call to dial into with his boss - the commander of the German air force.

It's not a big deal for the head of Air Force Operations. He sounds relaxed on the line as he chats with two colleagues about the "mega" view from his room, and how he's just come back from a drink at a nearby hotel where there's an incredible swimming pool.

"Not too shabby," one of them remarks.

Finally, the boss, Lieutenant General Ingo Gerhartz, dials in - and they begin. Over the next 40 minutes, the group appear to touch upon highly sensitive military issues, including the ongoing debate over whether Germany should send Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine.

What none of the call's participants know is that they're being eavesdropped on - and their conversation is being recorded.

Two weeks after the call took place, the audio tape was leaked by Russia's state-run RT channel.

Germany hasn't said whether they believe the recording may have been tampered with - but they have confirmed that the call did take place and that it was intercepted by, they believe, Russian spies.

Their man in Singapore had, according to the German government, sprung "a data leak".

While he hasn't been officially named, it's implied that it was Frank Gräfe who accidentally let spies onto the call.

Soon, their supposedly top-secret discussion spilled out via Russian state media and echoed across the world.


The officers discussed how Ukraine could potentially use German Taurus missiles

The apparent contents of the call are now well-known.

The four participants discussed what targets German-made Taurus missiles could potentially hit if Chancellor Olaf Scholz ever allowed them to be sent to Kyiv - a contentious issue in Germany.

French and British weapons deliveries were also brought up, including the highly sensitive suggestion that a "few" British personnel are allegedly on the ground in Ukraine.

But how were spies able to eavesdrop?

The answer we've been given so far boils down to a case of human error.

According to German authorities, the "data leak" was down to just one participant dialling in on an insecure line, either via his mobile or the hotel wi-fi.

The exact mode of dial-in is "still being clarified", Germany has said.

"I think that's a good lesson for everybody: never use hotel internet if you want to do a secure call," Germany's ambassador to the UK, Miguel Berger, told the BBC this week. Some may feel the advice came a little too late.

Eyebrows were raised when it emerged the call happened on the widely-used WebEx platform - but Berlin has insisted the officials used an especially secure, certified version.

Professor Alan Woodward from the Surrey Centre for Cyber Security says that WebEx does provide end-to-end encryption "if you use the app itself".

But using a landline or open hotel wi-fi could mean security was no longer guaranteed - and Russian spies, it's now supposed, were ready to pounce.

Professor Woodward says that spies were "probably sitting on the fringes of the Singapore Air Show".


The Singapore Air Show typically attracts high-level government, military and industry figures

The biennial event, which this year took place on 20-25 February, typically attracts high-level government, military and industry figures.

If you're a spy, "when you get gatherings like that, it's always worth sitting in the car park or getting a hotel room", says Professor Woodward.

The Russians could have, theoretically, used long-range antennae combined with computer programming capable of capturing local network traffic.

"Essentially these intercepts are like rattling door handles and seeing what you can find," Professor Woodward says. "Eventually you find one that's unlocked."

A researcher in cryptography in Berlin, Henning Seidler, believes the most likely theory is that the officer dialled in via his mobile phone and the call was picked up by spies' antenna who can also "forward" the traffic onto the main, official antenna.

But all the while, "they are just listening and writing down everything that's being transmitted".

"It's like fishing with dynamite. You just throw a stick of dynamite in a pond and see which fish are floating up afterwards."

"This was their most juicy catch."

Berlin was anxious to rule out one theory that was doing the rounds - that a Russian spy simply dialled in and sat on the line, without anyone noticing.

And the government is insisting that, while they are investigating what happened, this is all essentially down to one man's mistake.

The call was netted in a widespread fishing exercise, they argue. The spies got lucky, while Germany didn't.

Former senior army officer and Bundestag member, Roderich Kiesewetter, is among those who don't quite buy the "this could have happened to anyone" line of defence.

"You have to choose a certain kind of disguise for this disaster," says Mr Kiesewetter, who's also worked at the Nato military alliance and is a member of Germany's opposition conservative CDU party.


Defence Minister Boris Pistorius has said an investigation ruled out that a Russian spy had taken part in the call without being noticed

He believes that a "peacetime" mindset has allowed complacency to set in.

"It might be a personal mistake," Mr Kiesewetter says. "However, it is a signal of a systemic failure."

He also believes Germany is a "soft target" due in part to a "widespread Russian romanticism" dating back to World War Two.

But German government figures find suggestions that they are somehow soft on Russia increasingly irritating, particularly because Berlin has donated more weapons aid to Ukraine than any other nation in Europe.

Ministers also believe that Moscow deliberately released the leaked tape on the day of opposition leader Alexei Navalny's funeral in a deliberate attempt to distract at home and divide abroad.

Russian President Vladimir Putin's playing a "perfidious" game that "we must not fall for", said Defence Minister Boris Pistorius this week.

Russia has neither confirmed, or denied, that its intelligence service was behind the hack.

But whoever it was that picked up an insecure line in a Singapore hotel room late one February night, this Luftwaffe leak has been damaging for Germany.

It's further exposed domestic divisions about whether to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine and prompted a wider discussion about the country's perceived defence and security weaknesses.

In Berlin, they're just hoping that the leak was, indeed. just a one-off - rather than the tip of the iceberg.

British soldiers ‘on the ground’ in Ukraine, says German military leak

Kremlin claims audio of officers discussing UK help with missiles shows involvement of ‘collective west’

Individual error let Moscow intercept military call, Germany says

Dan Sabbagh and Kate Connolly


British soldiers are “on the ground” in Ukraine helping Kyiv’s forces fire long-range Storm Shadow missiles, according to a leak in Russian media of a top-secret call involving German air force officers.

The Kremlin said the leak demonstrated the direct involvement of the “collective west” in the war in Ukraine, while former British defence ministers expressed frustration with the German military in response to the revelations.


Released on Friday by the editor of the Kremlin-controlled news channel RT, Margarita Simonyan, the audio recording – confirmed as authentic by Germany – captures Luftwaffe officers discussing how Berlin’s Taurus missiles could be used to try to blow up the Kerch Bridge connecting Russia with occupied Crimea.

During the conversation, Lt Gen Ingo Gerhartz, the head of the Luftwaffe, describes how Britain works with Ukraine on deploying Storm Shadow missiles against targets up to 150 miles behind Russian lines.

“When it comes to mission planning,” the German commander says, “I know how the English do it, they do it completely in reachback. They also have a few people on the ground, they do that, the French don’t.”

Reachback is a military term to describe how intelligence, equipment and support from the rear is brought forward to units deployed on the front, but Gerhartz suggests the British approach is deeper, involving support on site.

The Kremlin spokesperson, Dmitry Peskov, said the leaked conversations “once again highlight the direct involvement of the collective west in the conflict in Ukraine” – although on Sunday Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, accused Moscow of waging “an information war” against the west.

Nevertheless, the authenticity of the 38-minute conversation, which took place a fortnight ago on the relatively insecure Webex platform, is not being doubted. It appears to have been hacked and recorded by Russian actors who passed it on to the editor of RT to release on Telegram on Friday.

Tobias Ellwood, a former UK junior defence minister, said the leak was embarrassing to Berlin, although he told the BBC that Russia probably knew about the British presence given the intensity of its espionage activities.

But that should “not prevent some serious conversations taking place in the diplomatic corridors between Germany and Britain and indeed Nato, as well as to why this happened in the first place”, Ellwood added.

Britain confirmed the presence of a “small number of personnel” in Ukraine on Tuesday last week, although it did not say what tasks they were undertaking amid concerns that any potential combat involvement could be considered as escalatory by Moscow.

That followed a surprise statement by the German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, last Monday, who said he would not provide Taurus missiles to Ukraine because it would require the presence of Germans to match the British and French and be engaged in “the way of target control and accompanying target control”.

That, he warned, risked making Berlin a “participant in the war” even if such soldiers were based in Germany. “German soldiers can at no point and in no place be linked with the targets that this system [the Taurus] reaches,” he added.

On the recording, Gerhartz and three other German officers are discussing the chancellor’s refusal, and how it may be possible to get around it, before a 30-minute meeting the air force chief has with the defence minister, Pistorius. They complain that a German journalist, said to be close to Scholz, had been briefed that Taurus is not effective.

They come to the conclusion that a speedy delivery and the use of the missiles in the immediate future would only be possible if German soldiers were involved. Taurus training for Ukrainian soldiers to avoid putting German soldiers on Ukraine soil was a possibility, but would take months of preparation.

Taurus missiles have a longer maximum range than Storm Shadow and Scalp, their French equivalents, of 300 miles. On the call, the German officers discuss potential target types for the Taurus including a “bridge in the east” that is said to be difficult to reach with pillars that are “relatively small”.

The description matches the strategic Kerch Bridge, a key supply route to Russian occupied Crimea, which despite numerous attempts to bomb it, the Ukrainians have so far been unable to destroy. They conclude it would be technically feasible to blow up the bridge, but it may take “10 to 20 missiles”.

Roderich Kiesewetter, the opposition Christian Democrats’ defence expert, said Russia had leaked the meeting at this moment in time to specifically “undermine a German Taurus delivery”. He suggested the leak was carried out “in order to divert public conversation away” from other issues, including the death of Alexei Navalny.

AngelicBeing:
Hmmmmm

madridguy:
Russia is always ten steps ahead the hypocrites.

CuntPeddler:


Oga stop sounding myopic. Developed countries spy on each other. The only error is from the German commanders who made a sensitive call on an unsecured line.