Armin Papperger is hard to miss. The white-haired chief executive of Rheinmetall has become the face of German arms production for Ukraine, and according to CNN, that made him a target. Five US and Western officials told the network that Russia planned to have him killed.
US intelligence picked up the plan earlier in 2024. Washington passed the warning to Berlin, and German security services moved to protect Papperger. A senior German government official confirmed that the US had alerted Germany. The officials said it was the most advanced of several Russian schemes to assassinate defense executives in Europe who back Ukraine’s war effort.
Why Rheinmetall
Rheinmetall is the largest and most successful German maker of 155mm artillery shells, the ammunition that Ukraine’s war of attrition runs on. The company was also about to open an armored vehicle plant inside Ukraine within weeks. One source familiar with the intelligence said that worried Moscow deeply.
It was unclear whether Russia meant to kill Papperger itself or hire a local proxy to do it.
A wider sabotage campaign
The plot had not been reported before. For more than six months, Russia has been running a sabotage campaign across Europe, mostly through proxies, CNN reported. Locally recruited amateurs have set fire to warehouses tied to arms shipments for Ukraine and carried out petty vandalism. In Poland, a Ukrainian man was recruited over Telegram by a handler he never met and paid $7 to spray anti-war graffiti. Later he was asked to plant surveillance cameras and burn down the fence of a Ukrainian-owned transport company.
Other cases are far more serious. In April, two German-Russian nationals were arrested over alleged bomb and arson plots against targets that included US military sites. In March, several men in London were charged with helping Russian intelligence set fire to a Ukrainian-linked warehouse. French authorities detained a Russian-Ukrainian man last month who was allegedly building bombs for a sabotage effort run from Moscow. Poland has arrested nine people over Russia-linked sabotage, the prime minister said in May, and is checking whether a May arson attack that destroyed Warsaw’s largest mall was connected.
US bases across Europe went on heightened alert last week for the first time in a decade, after intelligence that Russian-backed actors were considering attacks on American personnel and facilities.
A senior NATO official told reporters on Tuesday: “We’re seeing sabotage, we’re seeing assassination plots, we’re seeing arson. We’re seeing things that have a cost in human lives.” The official rejected the label “hybrid” for the campaign, saying arson and assassination plots are hard to place below the threshold of armed conflict. The same official said Moscow is acting now because elections across the West give it a chance to erode support for Ukraine, and because it sees a window before promised Western weapons reach the front.
Reaction
German officials declined to discuss the specifics of CNN’s reporting. Speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington on Thursday, Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said Russia is “waging a hybrid war of aggression” on its European neighbors. “We have seen that there have been attacks on factories,” she said. “We as Europeans must protect ourselves as best we can and not be naive.”
The German Interior Ministry said in a statement to CNN that Berlin “will not be intimidated by the Russian threats.”
The US National Security Council would not confirm the plot or the warning to Germany. Spokesperson Adrienne Watson said Washington is working with NATO allies “to expose and disrupt these activities” and that Russia’s actions “will not deter Allies from continuing to support Ukraine.”
Rheinmetall spokesman Oliver Hoffman declined to comment on the plot. “The necessary measures are always taken in regular consultation with the security authorities,” he said. CNN asked the Russian embassy in Washington for comment.
