The telegram decribes West Germany's reactions on Gorbachev's December 7, 1988 address at the UN where he announces drastic changes in Soviet foreign and security policy.

The telegram compiles updates from Defence Ministers (UK, West Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Italy) on the status of deployment of Pershing II and Cruise missiles decided in December 1979.

Notes from the meeting between Foreign Minister of Italy, Giulio Andreotti, and Foreign Minister of West Germany, Hans-Dietrich Genscher. The theme of the discussion is strengthening of the bilateral relationship between Italy and West Germany, the two major non-nuclear powers in Europe.

A letter from Mario Luciolli, the Italian Ambassador to Bonn, to Foreign Minister Giuseppe Medici. Luciolli discusses problems of both conventional and nuclear defense in Western Europe, expressing concerns over the credibility of NATO's involvement on the continent and advocating for further European integration.

Outlines the KGB’s response to the USSR’s signing of the Helsinki Accords in 1975. The accords obligated signatories to respect their citizens’ human rights. This gave Soviet dissidents and westerners leverage in demanding that the USSR end persecution on the basis of religious or political beliefs.

Some of the KGB’s active measures included the establishment of a charitable fund dedicated to helping victims of imperialism and capitalism, and the fabrication of a letter from a Ukrainian group to FRG President Walter Scheel describing human rights violations in West Germany. The document also mentions that the Soviet Ministry of Defense obtained an outline of the various European powers’ positions on human rights issues as presented at the March 1977 meeting of the European Economic Community in London from the Italian Foreign Ministry.

The KGB also initiated Operation “Raskol” [“Schism”], which ran between 1977 and 1980. This operation included active measures to discredit Soviet dissidents Andrei Sakharov, Yelena Bonner, and Alexander Solzhenitsyn, measures designed to drive a wedge between the US and its democratic allies, and measures intended to convince the US government that continued support for the dissident movement did nothing to harm the position of the USSR.