How the US and Germany foiled a Russian plot to assassinate the CEO of a weapons manufacturer that was shipping weapons to Ukraine – Report

 

Earlier this year, U.S. intelligence discovered that the Russian government was planning to assassinate the CEO of a powerful German weapons company that produces artillery shells and military vehicles for Ukraine, according to five U.S. and Western officials familiar with the matter.

The plot was part of a series of Russian plans to assassinate defense industry executives across Europe who supported Ukraine’s war effort, these sources said. The plan to kill Armin Papperger, a white-haired giant who led the German manufacturing charge in support of Kiev, was the most mature.

When the Americans learned of what had happened, they informed Germany, whose security services managed to protect Papperger and foil the plot.

A senior German government official confirmed that Berlin had been warned of the plot by the United States.

For more than six months, Russia has been waging a campaign of sabotage across Europe, largely by proxy.

He recruited local amateurs for everything from arson attacks on warehouses linked to weapons for Ukraine to small acts of vandalism, all designed to hinder the flow of weapons from the West to Ukraine and undermine public support for Kiev.

But intelligence suggesting Russia was willing to assassinate private citizens underscored to Western officials the lengths to which Moscow was willing to go in a parallel shadow war it is waging in the West.

Papperger was an obvious target: his company, Rheinmetall, is Germany’s largest and most successful manufacturer of 155mm artillery shells, which have become the decisive weapon in Ukraine’s grueling war of attrition.

In the coming weeks, the company will open a plant to produce armored vehicles in Ukraine, a move that, according to a source familiar with the intelligence community, deeply concerns Russia.

After a series of gains earlier this year, Moscow’s war effort has again stalled due to a doubling of Ukrainian defenses and heavy losses in personnel.

The series of previously unreported plots helps explain increasingly strident warnings from NATO officials about the severity of the sabotage campaign, which some senior officials say risks spilling over into armed conflict in Eastern Europe.

“We are seeing sabotage, we are seeing assassination plots, we are seeing arson. We are seeing things that have a cost in human lives,” a senior NATO official told reporters Tuesday. “I firmly believe that we are seeing a campaign of covert sabotage activities by Russia that have strategic consequences.”

The National Security Council declined to comment on the existence of the Russian plot and the U.S. warning to Germany. However, NSC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in a statement: “Russia’s escalating campaign of subversion is something we take extremely seriously and have focused on intensely over the past several months.

“The United States has discussed this issue with our NATO allies and we are actively working together to expose and stop these activities,” he said. “We have also been clear that Russia’s actions will not prevent our allies from continuing to support Ukraine.”

The National Security Council declined to comment on the existence of the Russian plot and the U.S. warning to Germany.

However, NSC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in a statement, “Russia’s escalating campaign of subversion is something we take extremely seriously and have focused on intensely over the past several months.

“The United States has discussed this issue with our NATO allies and we are actively working together to expose and stop these activities,” he said. “We have also been clear that Russia’s actions will not prevent our allies from continuing to support Ukraine.”

German officials declined to comment on the details of CNN’s report. But speaking on the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington on Thursday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock said it showed how Russia was “waging a hybrid war of aggression” against European allies.

“We have seen that there have been attacks on factories. And this underlines once again that we Europeans must protect ourselves as much as possible and not be naive,” Baerbock said.

In a separate statement sent to CNN, the German Interior Ministry said that Berlin “will not allow itself to be intimidated by Russian threats,” stressing that they are ultimately aimed at “undermining Germany’s and our partners’ support for Ukraine in its defense against Russia’s war of aggression.”

A Rheinmetall spokesman, Oliver Hoffman, declined to comment.

“The necessary measures are always taken in regular consultation with the security authorities,” Hoffman said.

CNN reached out to the Russian Embassy in Washington for comment.

NATO members seek to strengthen information sharing
Russia’s sabotage campaign was a major topic of discussion among NATO officials gathered in Washington for the union’s 75th anniversary summit.

NATO has sought to improve intelligence sharing within the alliance so that nations are able to connect the dots between what might otherwise appear to be distinct and unique criminal activities unique to their country.

But the campaign, and in particular Russia’s willingness to take lethal measures against European citizens on foreign soil, has raised difficult questions about how the alliance should respond.

In theory, under Article 5, an armed attack against a NATO member state is an attack against all.

Russia’s sabotage campaign has at times taken on the flavour of an amateurish, makeshift approach.

Some of the crimes linked to the campaign had no obvious connection to the conflict in Ukraine; for example, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk publicly suggested that a fire at an IKEA factory in Lithuania may have been the work of Russia.

In Poland, as reported by CNN, a Ukrainian man was recruited via Telegram by a Russian contact he had never met in person and was paid just $7 to deface walls with anti-war graffiti.

He was later asked to install surveillance cameras and burn the fence of a Ukrainian-owned transport company.

Some analysts have characterized the initiative as a “hybrid” campaign, using non-military tools such as propaganda, deception and sabotage.

But U.S. and European officials are gradually becoming more reluctant to characterize Russia’s sabotage efforts that way.

“I fundamentally reject the idea that what we are seeing is a hybrid campaign by Russia. There are hybrid elements. When I think of ‘hybrid,’ I think of … defacing monuments,” the senior NATO official said.

“Things that fall within the traditional definition of ‘below the threshold of armed conflict.'”

Since Russia is recruiting agents to carry out arson and assassination (lethal actions), “I’m not so sure that all of these fall within the threshold that the term ‘hybrid’ implies,” the official said.

It is unclear whether intelligence relating to Rheinmetall suggested that Russia intended to kill Papperger directly or to employ a local proxies.

Other Russian efforts have been far more serious than a few graffiti splashes or vandalizing a diplomat’s car: Last week, U.S. military bases across Europe were placed on heightened alert for the first time in a decade after the U.S. received intelligence that Russian-backed actors were considering carrying out sabotage attacks against U.S. military personnel and facilities, multiple sources familiar with the matter told CNN.

In April, two German-Russian citizens were arrested on charges of planning bomb and fire attacks on targets, including U.S. military facilities, on behalf of Russia.

In London in March, several men were charged with working with Russian intelligence to set fire to a warehouse linked to Ukraine. Poland is investigating whether an arson attack that destroyed Warsaw’s largest shopping mall in May was linked to Russia and has arrested nine people in connection with Russia-linked sabotage, the prime minister said in May. And last month, French authorities arrested a Russian-Ukrainian man who was allegedly building bombs as part of a sabotage campaign orchestrated by Moscow.

“They are doing this now because they believe that, as there are a number of elections taking place across the West, this is a great opportunity to try to undermine public support for Ukraine,” the senior NATO official said.

The official also said that Russia sees a window of opportunity before more weapons and ammunition promised by the West arrive on the battlefield in Ukraine.

For Russia, this “is the ideal time to strike the West in these types of operations to try to weaken support and prevent the flow of weapons into that area.” [CNN]

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