Lt. General Ingo Gerhartz and his aides were earnestly weighing up the technical and propaganda means by which to strike Russia with long-range ballistic missiles. In short, a NATO member was caught red-handed hatching an act of war against Russia.
After Russian media published the audio of the conversation, the German reaction has been to dismiss it as a cerebral war-gaming exercise and as an attempt by Russian disinformation to undermine the government of Olaf Scholz.
This obfuscation by Berlin will not wash. The incontrovertible fact is that the German commanders were deliberating on how to "optimize" the Ukrainian offensive capability to hit Russian targets with the long-range German Taurus cruise missile. The weapon has supposedly not yet been supplied to the Ukrainian regime due to concerns among some German politicians that doing so would escalate the war with Russia. It is clear from the audio tape that the German military chiefs are frustrated by the politicians not ordering the supply of the Taurus.
Gerhartz, the head of the German air force, tells his subordinates in no uncertain terms:
"We are now fighting a war that uses much more modern technology than our good old Luftwaffe."There you have it: the top German commander says unequivocally, "We are now fighting a war".
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