The Russian Ministry of Defence has denied sending its aircraft to practice live bombings using missiles inscribed with "To Berlin," after German tabloid Bild published images purporting to show Russian planes with the slogan emblazoned on their missiles.
On Tuesday evening Bild posted two images of aircraft being fitted with bombs which had "To Berlin" and "For Stalin" handwritten on them. The paper cited Russian naval news website Flot as the original source of the images and said that the planes were photographed while being prepared for a drill in Kaliningrad, Russia's European enclave, only 500km (310 miles) from the German capital.
"The inscriptions 'To Berlin' and 'For Stalin' appear to be more than just a show of nostalgia and demonstrate a dangerous trend among Russia's government and military," Bild wrote of the images.
According to previous press statements from the Russian Navy, an exercise involving Su-24 and modified An-26 naval aviation aircraft did take place between the end of July and the start of August in the Kaliningrad region and practice bombing was part of the exercise.
However, after the Bild story was widely circulated in Russia, an anonymous source for the Russian Ministry of Defence told Russian news agency Interfax that the reports were "nonsense."
"This is either just nonsense, a fake or an attempt to tug at anti-Russian sentiments," the source said. "It is well-known that signs on our military supplies were not present at any point either while they were being stored or during training activities." The source highlighted that no German journalists were present during the air force exercises, although Flot, where the images first appeared, is a Russian site.
After Bild's report went online, Flot republished the photos, acknowledging themselves as the source and citing parts of the Bild article.
Newsweek has not been able to verify if the images of the aircraft with the slogans are genuine and neither the Russian Ministry of Defence nor Flot immediately responded to Newsweek's request for comment.
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