Russia spins German military leak but chances of escalation slim: Analysis
Al Jazeera
Russia intercepted a call that revealed top-level talk on striking the Kerch Bridge. But analysts say while Berlin may be embarrassed, it’s far from planning an attack.
Russian propagandists made sure the German military’s most embarrassing leak in years would look like an episode of the 1941-1945 Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union.
“Comrades in uniforms,” or Russian intelligence services, intercepted a 38-minute-long conversation between German Air Force chief Lieutenant-General Ingo Gerhartz with his officers, Margarita Simonyan, the head of the Kremlin-funded RT television network, wrote on social media on Friday.
“The bridge in the east is hard to hit, it’s a rather small target, but [German-made] Taurus [missiles] can do it, can also hit the ammunition depots,” one of the officers told Gerhartz, according to the leak Simonyan posted online.
The bridge in question, the Kerch Bridge, is a $4bn, 19km long (12 miles) lacework of steel and concrete that links Crimea to mainland Russia.
To the Kremlin, the link is both geographic and metaphoric and epitomised the success of Crimea’s 2014 takeover from Ukraine that skyrocketed Russian President Vladimir Putin’s approval ratings and paved the way for the ongoing war.
