Scott Ritter: Leaked Crimea Attack Plans Begs the Question ‘Who’s in Charge in Germany’?

The editor-in-chief of Sputnik’s parent media group dropped bombshell audio last Friday of a conversation between senior Bundeswehr officers discussing plans to attack the Crimean Bridge using German-made Taurus missiles. The leak, whose authenticity was subsequently confirmed by German media, sparked a formal investigation.

The leaked conversation between senior Bundeswehr officers plotting aggression against Russia using German weapons raises serious questions about who’s truly in charge in Germany – the military or the civilian government, and signals a truly worrying slide toward military rule, former US Marine Corps intelligence officer and independent military analyst Scott Ritter has told Sputnik.

“There's a crisis in civil military affairs in Germany today, and the whole world seems to be ignoring this,” Ritter said, pointing out that while attention has been paid to the details of the leaked February 19 discussion, in which officers effectively plotted “an act of war” against Russia - “no ifs, and or buts” about it, the more important question about just who is in charge of Germany today has been left unanswered.

‘Who’s in charge in Germany?’ Scott Ritter asks amid leak of Bundeswehr’s Crimea attack plans

“There's a crisis in civil military affairs in Germany today, and the whole world seems to be ignoring this,” former US Marine Corps intelligence officer, ex-UN weapons inspector and… pic.twitter.com/Q94Wv1SIc5

— Sputnik (@SputnikInt) March 5, 2024

“What’s interesting about this conversation is, a few days prior to it the German chancellor, the senior civilian executive authority in Germany today, had specifically said that Germany will not be providing the Taurus missile to Ukraine. Moreover, the parliament of Germany, not once but twice, overwhelmingly voted against providing the Taurus cruise missile to Ukraine. Who's in charge in Germany? The civilian leadership or the military? Because, according to the conversation being held by these four senior German military officers, they were talking about a project that had been greenlighted by the defense minister of Germany,” Ritter stressed.

In other words, “while the chancellor and the parliament have said no to the provision of the Taurus missile to Ukraine, the defense minister is working with his Air Force officers to make it happen – to go into planning about how this weapon could be used to bring harm to Russia,” the observer said.

On top of that, Ritter pointed out that the apparent operational planning detailed in the leaked conversation constitutes a grave violation of “everything” NATO “purports to stand for.”

“When NATO spoke of expanding, and I'm talking about prior to the unification of Germany, when the concept of NATO expansion arose, one of the key aspects was that any new member must adhere to the standards of democratic rule that NATO used to define itself. And one of the key aspects of this standard is civilian control over the military. Absolutely required. There is no room in NATO for a military dictatorship, for the military to be dictating outcomes, especially in times of peace, to the civilian leadership,” Ritter explained.

Furthermore, he noted, when Moscow agreed to the unification of the two Germanies in 1990, one of the conditions was that Germany would never again wage a war of aggression against Russia.

“There are members of Parliament now…in Saxony, Germany who are actively seeking to investigate these German officers, to hold them accountable for violating German law, for planning a war of aggression. Because a war of aggression was determined at the Nuremberg Tribunal, which held the Nazis accountable for their crimes, committed not just against the Soviet Union, but others – for planning and implementing the biggest war crime of them all, a war of aggression; which is exactly what those four German officers were plotting against Russia on behalf of their defense minister, in total contravention to the direction given to them by the chancellor of Germany and the German parliament.”

“There's a crisis of civil-military relations today in Germany,” Ritter said, adding that the key question now is: “What’s the world going to do about it?”

Leaked Discussion

Last Friday, Sputnik parent media group Rossiya Segodnya editor-in-chief Margarita Simonyan published text and audio of a February 19 discussion between Bundeswehr representatives discussing the possibility of attacking the Crimean Bridge using Taurus cruise missiles provided to Ukraine. The conversation involved German Air Force Inspector Ingo Gerhartz, Air Force Command Operations and Exercises Department head Brig. Gen. Frank Graefe, and two employees of the Air Operations Center of Bundeswehr Space Command.

German media confirmed the authenticity of the recording, with the German Defense Ministry expressing concerns about possible additional leaks, and Chancellor Scholz announcing that the matter was “being investigated very thoroughly, very intensively and very quickly.”

The Christian Democratic Union and Christian Social Union – the biggest opposition bloc in the Bundestag, has requested an extraordinary meeting of the parliament’s defense committee over the scandalous audio, asking that Scholz specifically be in attendance.

White House spokesman John Kirby blasted the media’s fascination with the leak story, telling reporters on Monday that “speaking about the content of the leak” implicating NATO in direct aggression against Moscow “plays right into Russian hands.”

Expressing hesitation about delivering military support to Ukraine during the first months of the crisis in early 2022, the Scholz government has since become the second largest supporter of Kiev in terms of weapons support, behind only the United States. Berlin has provided over €17.7 billion ($19.2 billion US) in direct arms aid and billions in additional support via EU institutions. Germany signed a 10-page security agreement with Ukraine in mid-February that requires Berlin to not just support Kiev “for as long as it takes” in the proxy war against Russia, but assist in the buildup of Ukraine’s armed forces in the conflict’s aftermath. Germany passed a 2024 budget with over $8 billion in military aid to Kiev in early February, notwithstanding a growing budgetary and economic crisis at home, the reduction of subsidies to farmers, a spike in energy prices, and the worst manufacturing downturn since the Second World War.