Germany refuses to sack Wi-fi leak official

Senior member of air force used hotel internet for call that led to interception of classified missile details ‘If something worse does not come out, I will ... not sacrifice my best officers for Putin’s games’

GERMANY will not sack the brigadier general who inadvertently leaked military secrets to Russia by dialling into a secure phone call from a Singapore hotel.

Boris Pistorius, the German defence minister, said the classified conversation about Taurus missiles was the result of an “individual error” and communication systems had not been breached. In the call, published on Russian propaganda sites last week, German officials discuss Olaf Scholz’s reluctance to send Taurus missiles to Kyiv and the alleged presence of British soldiers on the ground in Ukraine.

Brig Gen Frank Gräfe was one of four high-ranking air force officers on the call leaked by the sanctioned RT broadcaster. Ingo Gerhartz, the head of the air force, was also on the call with Brig Gen Gräfe, the department head for operations and exercises, and two other senior officers. One of the participants in the call dialled in from a hotel room in Singapore where he was visiting an air show, Mr Pistorius said. The meeting was held on Webex, a popular public platform for audio and video meetings.

The two officers discussed Brig Gen Gräfe’s presence at a Singapore air show on Feb 19 at the start of the call, according to the RT transcript. Social media posts from the air show, sourced by The

Telegraph, discuss the visit by Brig Gen Gräfe, a career soldier with a computer science degree who was linked to the scandal by German media. The leak has caused dismay in the West and been gleefully celebrated by the Kremlin.

Mr Pistorius, who did not name Brig Gen Gräfe, said that the “trust of allies in Germany remains unbroken”.

“Everyone knows about the danger of such wiretapping attacks and knows that no one can offer 100 per cent protection,” he added.

He added he was unlikely to sack the officer responsible unless more wrongdoing was found in a security review. “If something worse does not come out, I will certainly not sacrifice my best officers for Putin’s games,” he said.

He went on to suggest Russia routinely tries to bug insecure communications networks at hotels where they believe top German officials will be receiving sensitive phone calls.

“For the Russian secret services, it was a real find … targeted hacking took place in the hotels used across the board,” he said. “It must therefore be assumed that the access to this conference was a chance hit as part of a broad, scattered approach.”

The conversation also casts doubt on the reasons the German chancellor has publicly given for refusing to send Taurus missiles to Ukraine. Mr Scholz has argued that Germany could not justify matching British and French moves in sending long-range missiles to Ukraine and supporting their deployment. But according to the leaked recording, there is no reason why Taurus missiles could not be operated without any direct help from German soldiers.

Yesterday, Maria Zakharova, Russia’s foreign ministry spokesman, described the German officers on the call as “inglorious b-----ds” for discussing possible strikes on the Kerch bridge linking Russia to Crimea. The Kremlin said the call was proof Germany was going to carry out strikes inside Russia, a claim swiftly denied by Berlin.

Dmitry Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman, said: “The recording itself suggests that the Bundeswehr is discussing substantively and specifically plans to strike Russian territory.”