From "The Analyst":
NO CHANCE OF TAURUS NOW
The Russians knew what they were doing when they leaked the Luftwaffe commander discussing Taurus deployment to Ukraine. Stupidly discussing secret information over an unencrypted WebEx channel, the German communications services should be ashamed of themselves for letting this happen.
Yet the leak, letting everyone know the Russians listened in and how they did it is unusual. They gave away their source and revealed it because the value of doing so totally outweighed the value of keeping quiet.
The Russians called in the German Ambassador to dress him down over the comments. They have painted themselves as they alyways do, as the victim of NATO aggression. The revelations that British servicemen may be on the ground in Ukraine are probably no surprise to the Russians at all. In their place I would have assumed it was so. They would do the same thing and have in the past, so their outrage is entirely contrived.
However it has sent left wing news sites like the Guardian into a panic and outraged right wing pro Russian sources as irresponsibly moving towards war.
For Chancellor Sholz however, it’s made his decision not to supply the missiles even more solidified. Everything he wrings his hands over - the possibility of adding to the crisis, the fake outrage of the Russians, the dangers of ‘direct’ involvement, have all been confirmed - if you want to believe that theory as he does.
But Russia scored big with this, because they were terrified of Taurus. It’s the one thing that could have wrecked the Kerch bridge and any number of deeper command and control centres, ammo dumps and the like. Keeping it out of the war is a victory and worth the price of revealing a few fleeting comms intercept secrets. There are plenty more.
