Leak of call about British operations in Ukraine ‘worrying on number of levels’

Get the free Morning Headlines email for news from our reporters across the world Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email Sign up to our free Morning Headlines email SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy policy Russia’s leak of a conversation by German military officers involving details of British operations on the ground in Ukraine is “worrying on a number of levels”, MP Tobias Ellwood, former chairman of the Commons Defence Committee said. Germany’s defence minister Boris Pistorius has described the leak of the conversation as part of Russia’s “information war” against the West, and said it is about “undermining our resolve”. Asked on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme what the most troubling aspect was, Mr Ellwood said: “There’s many aspects of this – at the recent Munich Security Conference attended by the Chancellor Olaf Scholz, and indeed President Zelensky, who was begging for weapon systems, the very public frustration about Germany not matching Britain in sending long range air launch missiles was second only to the frustration in delays over the Americans not sending their 60 billion package of support that’s got caught up in congress. Mr Ellwood added: “Unlike here, where the longer term strategic dangers to our economy and our security of Putin winning are constantly spelled out by the Prime Minister by the UK Government, and that helps retain public support for the scale of military systems, in Germany, in contrast, it’s still seen by the German public as a war in Ukraine, not part of a wider confrontation that Putin is seeking to have with the West as Putin moves his economy to a war footing and actually becomes arguably more powerful than Stalin.” Mr Ellwood added that “given the intensity of Russia’s spying on Germany and others, they probably have not learned anything that they didn’t already guess”.