German Defense Ministry Concerned About Possibility of Wider Secret Talks Leak - Reports

BERLIN (Sputnik) - The German Defense Ministry is concerned that the disclosed recording of confidential army talks on Russia and Ukraine could be part of a wider leak spanning the country's air force and other military divisions, German magazine Der Spiegel reported, citing unnamed sources.

The conversation was held on the WebEx platform which is "relatively easy" to wiretap, the magazine estimated. One of the people in the conversation reportedly dialed in via a mobile phone as they were in Singapore at the time. Both the German armed forces and the defense ministry often hold online talks on the WebEx platform, the report said.

Earlier in the day, German news agency DPA reported that the leaked conversation between German military officers was authentic.

On Friday, Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of RT and the Rossiya Segodnya media group (Sputnik's parent company), published the text of a conversation among four Bundeswehr representatives discussing a potential attack on the Crimean Bridge with Taurus missiles. The conversation, which took place on February 19, involved Inspector of the German air force Ingo Gerhartz, Brig. Gen. Frank Graefe, head of the operations and exercises department at the air force command in Berlin, and two employees of the air operations center of the Bundeswehr Space Command.