Kremlin calls for clarification from Germany on wiretapped call

The Kremlin has sharply criticized the contents of a phone call it intercepted between German Air Force officers and demanded further information.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz has announced a quick and thorough clarification of the case, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the Interfax news agency on Monday. "We hope that we will somehow find out, if possible even through the media, what conclusion the investigation has come to."

On Friday, Russia published a recorded conversation between senior officers in which they discussed deployment scenarios for the German Taurus cruise missile if it were to be delivered to Ukraine after all.

They also discussed the possible destruction of the bridge built by Russia to the Ukrainian peninsula of Crimea, which was annexed in violation of international law.

Peskov called this proof of the direct involvement of Western states in the war that Russia is waging against Ukraine.

The recording shows that the German armed forces, the Bundeswehr, are planning concrete strikes on Russian territory, he said. It is now important to find out whether the Bundeswehr is organizing such planning games on its own initiative or whether this is part of German state policy, he added.

"Both the one and the other are bad," said Peskov.

The German ambassador had therefore already been summoned, he claimed, referring to a conversation with Alexander Graf Lambsdorff at the Foreign Ministry in Moscow on Monday morning.

However, Ambassador Lambsdorff had already clarified that this was not a summons, but a meeting on "bilateral issues" that had been planned for some time.

The Germans are the eternal enemy of Russia, wrote former Russian president Dmitry Medvedev.

The call from World War II, "Death to the German fascist occupiers," is once again relevant, he wrote on his Telegram channel.

Medvedev, who once sat in the Kremlin as a liberal beacon of hope, has been trying to make a name for himself in Moscow as a hardliner against the West since the start of the Russian war two years ago.