Downing Street has said that the leak of a conversation with German officials by Russia is “a matter for Germany,” with the country’s defence minister confirming the hack occurred over an unsecured line at a Singapore Hotel.
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz began a probe after a recording in which German military officers discussed support for Ukraine was published by Russian state media on Friday.
In response to the security breach, the prime minister’s official spokesman said on Monday: “That’s obviously a matter for Germany to investigate and you’ve got the Chancellor Scholz’s words on this.
“I think he said that it’s clearly a very serious matter and that’s why it’s now being investigated very carefully.
“On our part, the UK was the first country to provide long-range precision strike missiles to Ukraine and we would encourage our allies to do the same. We have been clear from the outset that the UK would provide Ukraine with the necessary aid, including lethal support to defend itself and reclaim its sovereign territory.”
Russia Hacked Unsecured Phone Line at Singapore Hotel
On Tuesday, Germany’s defence minister, Boris Pistorius, confirmed that the leak occurred when a German military officer used an unsecured phone line at a hotel in Singapore to join a conference call that was hacked by Russians.
The 38-minute call was subsequently leaked on social media by Margarita Simonyan, the chief editor of the Russian state-funded television channel, RT.
Mr. Pistorius told reporters in Berlin that “not all participants“ of the conference call ”adhered to the secure dialling procedure as intended,” detailing that the officer in question had dialled into the WebEx call using either the hotel’s Wi-Fi or his mobile phone, but not a secured line, which is mandatory for such calls.
The German defence minister said that the officer had been attending the Singapore Air Show, which had been attended by high-ranking military officers from across Europe.
Worrying on a Number of Levels
Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood, the former chairman of the Commons Defence Committee, told BBC Radio 4’s “Today” programme on Monday that “this interception and the leak of military planning discussion is worrying on a number of decibel levels.”Mr. Ellwood said that “given the intensity of Russia’s spying on Germany and others, they probably have not learned anything that they didn’t already guess already.”
But that “does 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.”
Former Army chief Lord Dannatt, who sits on the National Security Strategy Joint Select Committee, had told Times Radio on Monday that he was concerned German officers on the call were suggesting British forces were in Ukraine.
“They are suggesting that there are British people in Ukraine. It’s not for you or me to comment on that. We have provided a lot of equipment to them. We provided a lot of training,” Lord Dannatt said.
“As far as I’m concerned, I think what they were talking about was whether they would or wouldn’t supply a German system akin to our Storm Shadow. I suspect that we do our training on Storm Shadow, either in this country or in Poland or elsewhere. It’s not for you or I to confirm or deny whether there are British military in Ukraine,” he added.
