Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev says Germany is preparing for war against Russia. He did this after a recording emerged that showed a secret conversation between four high-ranking German officers. They are talking about a possible delivery of Taurus cruise missiles to Ukraine and what targets they could hit.
It was Russian propagandists who published the secret recording on Friday. She reportedly dated February 19. The German military has confirmed the recording is authentic and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz promised a thorough investigation into the painful leak.
Medvedev bluntly points to the German army as the instigator of the threat of war and not to Chancellor Scholz. He scornfully calls the latter “a liver sausage” and “a peace-loving man who refuses to give long-range missiles to the Banderites (a nickname for the Ukrainians, ed.) to hand over”.
Frustration
Scholz has been holding up the delivery of the Taurus cruise missiles for months, much to the frustration of both his coalition partners, the opposition party CDU and his Western allies. According to experts, he fears an escalation of the conflict in Ukraine if he were to deploy them.
According to Medvedev, it is not clear what role politics played in the scandal and to what extent the government was actually aware of the scheming. But that doesn’t really matter, they say.
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“History has many examples of military leaders taking the place of politics in making decisions about starting or escalating a war,” he says. “They will come to Scholz and tell him: ‘Mr. Chancellor, a rocket has been shot down in Ukraine. She was on her way to Berlin.’ What do you think Scholz will answer then? That’s pretty clear.”
According to Medvedev, there is nothing innocent about the overheard conversation of the high-ranking soldiers. “Germany is preparing for a war with Russia,” he says clearly.
Confidant
Medvedev is considered a confidant of Russian President Vladimir Putin. Since the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the former president has presented himself as a hardliner and appears to be even more radical than Putin. He has threatened several times to use nuclear weapons against the West.
He shared his message only on his Russian Telegram channel this time, suggesting it was primarily intended for a domestic audience. He has 1.2 million followers there.
Why are the leaked conversations about the Taurus missile so sensitive? “The Germans have something even tougher in their arsenal than the French and British” (+)
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