CNN
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U.S. intelligence agencies discovered earlier this year that Moscow was plotting to assassinate the CEO of a leading German arms manufacturer that produced artillery shells and military vehicles for Ukraine, according to five U.S. and Western officials familiar with the matter.
The plot was one in a series of Russian plots to assassinate defense industry executives across Europe who were supporting the Ukrainian war effort, these sources said. The most mature was the plot to kill Armin Papelger, a hulking, gray-haired man who had led the attack on German manufacturers backing Kiev.
When the US military learned of the plan, they alerted Germany, and German security forces were able to protect Papelger and thwart the plot. A senior German government official confirmed that Germany had been warned about the plan by the US.
For more than six months, Russia, mainly through proxies, has been waging a campaign of subversive activity across Europe, employing local amateurs to carry out everything from arson attacks on Ukrainian arms depots to minor acts of sabotage, all with the goal of blocking the flow of arms from the West into Ukraine and undermining popular support for Kiev.
But the indications of Russia’s willingness to assassinate civilians have highlighted to Western officials the lengths Russia is willing to go in a simultaneous shadow war in the West.
Papelger was an obvious target. His company, Rheinmetall, is Germany’s largest and most successful company, making the crucial 155mm artillery shells that have been the deciding factor in Ukraine’s war of attrition. The company is set to open an armored car factory in Ukraine within weeks, a move that one of the sources said is of great concern to Russia. After a series of victories earlier this year, Moscow’s war effort has stalled again due to Ukraine’s building up defenses and heavy losses in personnel.
Fabian Bimmer/Pool/Getty Images
Employees work on the production line during a groundbreaking ceremony for a new munitions factory of German defense contractor Rheinmetall in Unterlues, Germany, on February 12, in the presence of German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Defense Minister Boris Pistorius.
The previously unreported plot helps explain why NATO officials are sounding increasingly strong warnings about the seriousness of the sabotage campaign, which some say could escalate into armed conflict in eastern Europe.
“We are seeing sabotage, assassination attempts, arson. We are seeing loss of life,” a senior NATO official told reporters on Tuesday. “We are convinced that a covert sabotage campaign with strategic implications is taking place by Russia.”
The National Security Council declined to comment on the existence of the Russian plot or the U.S. warning to Germany, but NSC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in a statement that “Russia’s escalating subversive activities are something we take extremely seriously and have been monitoring intensively over the past several months.”
“The United States is consulting with our NATO allies on this issue and is actively working together to expose and stop these activities,” she said. “We have also made clear that Russia’s actions will not deter our allies from continuing to support Ukraine.”
The National Security Council declined to comment on the existence of the Russian plot or the U.S. warning to Germany, but NSC spokeswoman Adrienne Watson said in a statement that “Russia’s escalating subversive activities are something we take extremely seriously and have been monitoring intensively over the past several months.”
“The United States is consulting with our NATO allies on this issue and is actively working together to expose and stop these activities,” she said. “We have also made clear that Russia’s actions will not deter our allies from continuing to support Ukraine.”
German officials declined to comment on the specifics of CNN’s report, but speaking on the sidelines of a NATO summit in Washington on Thursday, German Foreign Minister Annalena Baabock said it showed how Russia was “waging a hybrid war of aggression against our European allies.”
“We know there was an attack on a factory and this once again underlines that we as Europeans have to protect ourselves as best we can and we cannot be complacent,” Baerbock said.
In a separate statement sent to CNN, the German Interior Ministry said Berlin would “not be intimidated by Russian threats,” stressing that the latter were essentially aimed at “undermining Germany’s and our partners’ support for Ukraine’s defense against Russia’s war of aggression.”
Rheinmetall spokesman Oliver Hoffmann declined to comment.
“The necessary measures are always taken in regular consultation with security authorities,” Hoffman said.
CNN has reached out to the Russian Embassy in Washington for comment.
Russian subversive activities were a major topic of discussion among NATO officials gathered in Washington for a summit marking the alliance’s 75th anniversary, as the alliance seeks to improve information sharing among allies and help them link seemingly disparate acts to their own unique criminal activities.
But the operation, and especially Russia’s willingness to take lethal action against European citizens on foreign soil, raises difficult questions about how the allies should respond. In theory, according to Article 5, an armed attack on any NATO member state is an attack on all member states.
Russian sabotage sometimes smells of amateur shotgun attacks. Some crimes associated with this activity have no obvious connection to the Ukrainian conflict. For example, Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk publicly suggested that the fire at an IKEA in Lithuania may have been the work of Russia. CNN reported that in Poland, a Ukrainian man was recruited by a Russian representative on Telegram, whom he had never met in person, and was paid just $7 to spray anti-war graffiti. He was then asked to install security cameras and burn the fence of a Ukrainian-owned shipping company.
Some analysts have called the effort a “hybrid” operation, using non-military means such as propaganda, deception and sabotage, but U.S. and European officials have increasingly resisted describing Russian subversive activities in that way.
“I fundamentally reject the notion that what we’re seeing is a Russian hybrid operation. There are hybrid elements to it. When I think of ‘hybrid,’ I think of the defacing of monuments,” the NATO official said. “It fits the traditional definition of ‘below the threshold for armed conflict.'”
Because Russia has recruited operatives to carry out deadly acts such as arson and assassination plots, “we are not convinced that all of this falls below the threshold of what is meant by the word ‘hybrid,'” the official said.
It is not clear from the Rheinmetall-related intelligence whether Russia intended to kill Papelger directly or to hire a local proxy to do so.
Russia’s other efforts go much further than minor graffiti and vandalism of diplomats’ cars: US military bases across Europe were put on heightened alert last week for the first time in a decade after the US received intelligence that Russian-backed forces were considering sabotaging US personnel and facilities, multiple sources told CNN.
In April, two Russians of German descent were arrested on suspicion of planning bomb and arson attacks on US military facilities and other targets on behalf of Russia.
In London, several men were charged in March 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 had Russian links, and its prime minister said in May that nine people had been arrested for Russian-linked sabotage. And last month, French authorities arrested a Ukrainian man of Russian descent who they said was building bombs as part of a sabotage campaign orchestrated by Moscow.
Dariusz Borovic/Agencja Wyborcza.pl/Reuters
A drone shot of the Malywyrska 44 shopping centre burning during a massive fire in Warsaw, Poland on May 12, 2024.
“They’re doing this now because there are a lot of elections happening in Western countries and they see this as a great opportunity to weaken public support for Ukraine,” the senior NATO official said.
The official also said Russia sees an opportunity before additional weapons and ammunition promised by Western countries arrive on the Ukrainian battlefield.
For Russia, now is a “great opportunity to target Western countries with this type of operation, weaken their support and block the flow of weapons.”
CNN’s Zachary Cohen, Nadine Schmidt and Chris Stern contributed to this report.
